TikTok’s founder is now China’s richest person. But the country’s total number of billionaires has shrunk
CNN
China has a new richest person – and it’s the entrepreneur behind the wildly popular, and controversial, app TikTok.
China has a new richest person – and it’s the entrepreneur behind the wildly popular, and controversial, app TikTok. Zhang Yiming, 41, co-founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, topped the 2024 Hurun China Rich List, released Tuesday. His wealth reached $49.3 billion, as assessed by research, media and investment group Hurun Inc, which publishes the ranking of the country’s richest people. Zhang’s ascendency comes after ByteDance’s global revenue grew 30% last year to $110 billion, Hurun said. Since its official launch in May 2017, TikTok has been catapulted to mass global popularity as well as becoming an era-defining social media platform beloved by many young people around the world – and a trailblazing example for other Chinese companies eager to break into US and global markets. But it’s also now facing mounting legal battles in the US, where according to Hurun it has nearly 200 million users. There, TikTok is battling state and federal lawsuits related to alleged failures to protect children using the app, while it and ByteDance are fighting a law that could force a nationwide ban of the app if TikTok doesn’t spin off its US operations.
Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper owner, announced that its more than 200 publications, including USA Today, will not publish presidential endorsements in the run-up to the November 5 election.
In the next four days, a fire hose of data will be unleashed, providing crucial snapshots of the US economy in advance of a pivotal election and a Federal Reserve meeting.
Americans are emerging from a yearslong funk about the economy, with the presidential election just a week away.
CNN says a right-wing commentator will not be welcomed back on air after he made a racist remark on “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip.”
So long to all that “free” money.
Americans around the country avoided McDonald’s last week after an E coli outbreak that left dozens of people sick after they ate Quarter Pounder hamburgers.
Partnerships with influencers have become an increasingly popular campaign strategy. But a regulatory gap means that unlike political ads that run on TV — or typical sponsored content that influencers post for brands — content creators are not required to disclose if they’ve been paid to endorse a candidate or speak about a political issue on their page.
If reelected, Donald Trump has made clear that he plans to exact revenge on the people and institutions he perceives as a threat. His “enemies” list seems to be constantly growing as the election nears, and includes Democratic politicians, the media, lawyers and political donors who he believes were “involved in unscrupulous behavior.”
The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, in his first public comments since igniting uproar last week over his decision to withhold the venerable newspaper’s endorsement in the presidential race, defended the move in a rare op-ed published Monday evening by the Post.
The ripple effect of Jeff Bezos’s decision to block The Washington Post from endorsing a presidential candidate continues to reverberate through the newspaper, as a tidal wave of readers cancel their subscriptions and nearly one-third of the Post’s editorial board step down in protest.
Apple Intelligence launched on Monday, but the rollout is just a glimpse of how Apple hopes to transform its products with AI.