The Japan operator of the popular Chinese video-sharing app TikTok said Monday it has paid social media influencers to spread certain videos on Twitter without informing viewers about the payments.
The Japan office of ByteDance Ltd. is believed to have spread TikTok videos handpicked by the company through the influencers to raise recognition levels of the app in a strategy that could be considered as stealth marketing. It is believed viewers could have mistaken those videos as ordinary posts by general social media users.
Unable to view this article?
This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software.
Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.
If this does not resolve the issue or you are unable to add the domains to your allowlist, please see out this support page.
We humbly apologize for the inconvenience.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.