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From Behind the Great Firewall
網絡防火墻背后的故事
The next big thing in social media, TikTok, is fun, irreverent, and Made in China.
抖音國際版TikTok是社交媒體屆的下一個重頭戲，它有趣、荒誕、始創于中國。
It's also got some unusual ideas about censorship and free speech.
對于審查制度和言論自由，它也擁有一些非同尋常的想法。
MOST nights, from around 7 till midnight, Sydney Jade is on TikTok, the smartphone app of the moment.
大多數晚上7點到午夜的時間里，雪梨·杰德都泡在Tiktok上，這是時下最火的智能手機應用。
The platinum blond teenager films herself singing show tunes, doing jumping jacks, and joking around with store clerks at a Walmart not far from her home in Oklahoma.
這位住在俄克拉荷馬州的金發少女錄制自己的視頻，她唱著歌，跑跑跳跳，還和離家不遠的沃爾瑪商店中的店員們開著玩笑。
Her short music videos and livestreams are popular—Jade has 284,000 followers, some of whom periodically send her virtual gifts, like 99-inch Rainbow Puke stickers.
杰德的音樂短視頻和LiveStreams都很受歡迎，她擁有28.4萬粉絲，其中一些人定期給她送虛擬禮物，比如99英寸的彩虹催吐劑貼紙。
Jade's parents resisted TikTok at first.
杰德的父母起初抵制她錄制視頻。
They hadn't heard of the app and, Jade says, "didn't like the idea of strangers watching me sing alone in front of the pink curtains in my bedroom."
他們沒有聽說過這個應用，杰德說，“他們不喜歡陌生人看著我在臥室粉色窗簾前獨自唱歌的想法?！?/p>
But she convinced them that TikTok was "friendlier for kids than other apps like Facebook."
但她讓父母相信，Tiktok“和臉書等其他應用相比，更適合孩子使用”。
They let her join last year, just as, it seems, every other teenager signed on as well.
去年，他們讓她和其他青少年一樣也注冊了應用。
In January, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the Android and iPhone stores, according to research firm Sensor Tower Inc.
今年1月，根據研究公司Sensor Tower的數據，Tiktok是安卓和iPhone應用商店中下載次數最多的程序。
The story sounds a lot like the rise of other social media powers such as Instagram and Snapchat, both of which pitched themselves as alternatives to Facebook's big blue app.
這個故事聽起來很像Instagram和Snapchat等其他社交媒體巨頭的崛起，它們都將自己定位為臉書藍色應用的替代品。
But TikTok wasn't created by Stanford students Mark Zuckerberg could buy off or spend into the ground.
但是，Tiktok并非由斯坦福大學的學生馬克·扎克伯格所研發，可以花錢買斷。
It's a subsidiary of a Beijing startup, Bytedance Ltd., that's built a collection of valuable apps in China powered by vast troves of data and sophisticated artificial intelligence.
它是由北京一家初創企業字節跳動科技有限公司的子公司開發，該公司在中國開發出一系列非常實用的應用，這些應用由大量數據和復雜的人工智能提供支持。
Last year, Bytedance's investors valued the company at $75 billion, the most of any startup in the world.
去年，字節跳動科技有限公司的投資者所評估的公司估值為750億美元，超過全球所有初創企業的估值。
