Emily Baker-White

'A must-read account from a heroic reporter who has taken on the world's most dangerous tech company' – Chris Miller, award-winning author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology'Engaging . . . this excellent book lays out the damage of letting arbitrary political power intervene in business' – Financial TimesIt’s on your phone. It’s on your children’s phones. It’s on more than a billion screens across the planet, serving up joy, creativity and connection. But behind the slick feed of the world’s most addictive app lies ruthless ambition and a global war for control.This is the dramatic, untold story of TikTok.Charting its rise from obscurity into the world’s most valuable startup, Emily Baker-White reveals how TikTok's visionary founder, ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming, reshaped the global internet from a place where you searched for information to one where information comes to you. Billions of users were soon hooked by the most effective recommendation algorithm in the world.But there was a cost to such success. Soon, TikTok was embroiled in accusations of surveillance, censorship and user manipulation, attracting controversy from India and Europe to the US. After Baker-White – a Harvard-trained lawyer and investigative reporter – revealed that Chinese engineers could access Americans’ private information, a team of ByteDance employees even used the app to track her location.Based on unprecedented access to internal documents, leaked recordings and accounts from whistle-blowers inside the company, Every Screen on the Planet reveals how TikTok became trapped between two superpowers, desperate to survive. It is the story of how your attention became the world’s mo­­­­st valuable – and dangerous – commodity.'Revealing. A story about power, control and the hidden battles shaping what we see online' – Parmy Olson, bestselling author of Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World

The global story of the world's most controversial social media network and the struggle to control it. TikTok boasts 1.6 billion active users worldwide and wields unprecedented power over our culture. Its crown jewel is the most addictive algorithm ever invented. As a result, it has become a political football all over the world. In Every Screen on the Planet, Harvard-trained lawyer and investigative journalist Emily Baker-White charts TikTok's rise - from its Chinese founders' early ambitions to its emergence as the world's most valuable startup. She examines its potential value as a surveillance and propaganda tool for strongmen and the huge controversy it has fostered, from India to Washington, DC. Based on explosive reporting that caused TikTok to track the author and led to an ongoing criminal investigation, Baker-White's engrossing narrative takes us inside the company as the US government seeks backdoor access to observe and influence TikTok's data stream and eventually gives the company an ultimatum: divorce from your Chinese founders or be banned. Touching on politics, business and technology, Every Screen on the Planet takes us behind the scenes of TikTok's incredible growth and its astounding - and ongoing - impact on society.