These are the power players steering TikTok's rise in the US

John Phillips/Getty Images for TechCrunch; Kudzi/YouTube; Jerod Harris/Getty Images

From left: TikTok global president Alex Zhu, US general manager Vanessa Pappas, and creator community director Kudzi Chikumbu.

• TikTok has exploded onto the US social scene in the last year, attracting millions of teens who scour the platform for viral memes and create their own short videos.
• However, there is little known about the people in charge of running the platform, and the executives at the top of its owner, ByteDance, a $75 billion company based in China.
• TikTok has faced scrutiny about its ties to China, and how much access and influence the Chinese government has to TikTok's user data and content moderation.
• Here are the most influential and important people in charge of TikTok in the US, a presence which has been as controversial as it is popular.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Although TikTok is one of the hottest and influential platforms on the internet right now, there's relatively little known about the company and people behind it.

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Other tech companies, like Facebook and Google, have executives with massive name recognition who make regular public appearances at conferences and in media outlets. But TikTok isn't the same: We got our first idea of the person currently in charge of TikTok, Alex Zhu, when he sat down for a rare interview with The New York Times in late 2019 - even though the app had been around for more than two years.

Perhaps it's because of TikTok's international roots. The app is owned by the major Chinese company ByteDance, a $75 billion firm that was behind some of the most popular apps in China before it found success on a global scale with TikTok. Now, the company is lauding TikTok - which has been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times - as a place for viral hilarity and widespread memes.

However, TikTok's burgeoning popularity in the US has also raised questions about its ties to the Chinese government, and how much access and influence the Chinese government has to TikTok's user data and content moderation. Lawmakers have cautioned that TikTok could pose a national security threat to the country, and the US army banned soldiers from using TikTok on government-issued phones and devices in early 2020.

TikTok has also faced allegations that it censors "culturally problematic" and political content that could be seen as offensive to the Chinese government, according to former employees' reports to The Washington Post and documents obtained by The Guardian and the German blog Netzpolitik. TikTok was forced to issue a public apology to an American teenager in November when the company suspended her account shortly after she posted videos, disguised as makeup tutorials, to issue a statement about China's treatment of Muslims.

A year and a half after its debut in the US, TikTok is taking steps to distance itself from its home country. The app is also now reportedly searching for a CEO to run day-to-day operations while based in the US.

These are some of the most important people in charge of TikTok's US operations: