Business | Toko-Tok 

Will TikTok’s GoTo gambit save its Indonesian business?

How the video app is navigating around a digital shakedown

A Gojek driver delivers a parcel in Jakarta, Indonesia.
TikTok on the straight and narrow?Photograph: Getty Images
|Singapore

The more the world’s youngsters love TikTok’s viral videos, the more their elected elders hate the app. They decry it for supposedly corroding young minds and, worse, for its links to China, home to its parent company, ByteDance. Many in America want to ban it. India already has. In October Indonesia, another big and promising market, shut down TikTok’s fledgling but lucrative sideline of selling goods via its videos, by requiring social-media firms to obtain an e-commerce licence—with no guarantee of success.

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This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Toko-Tok”

From the December 16th 2023 edition

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