Hi there, welcome back to M-Nex's weekly catch-up on regulatory affairs. My name is James Panicki. I'm a member of

M-lex's Asia-Pacific team. Now, unless you have teenage children, or indeed unless you are a teenager, you might not fully appreciate how much is at stake in the escalating regulatory and political fight over TikTok.

The video sharing platform has become a global sensation and has tapped into that particular demographic, but there are

mounting concerns over TikTok's acquisition, use and storage of personal data.

And these privacy concerns have fed into growing unease over the Chinese government's access

to that data.

Then add to that a combustible political backdrop, the upcoming elections in the US. President

Donald Trump has told TikTok that it needs to sell its US operations or it will be forced to

shut down and Microsoft now appears to be the frontrunner in the race to buy at the very least

the platform's local company.

Mnex recently published a global wrap,

analyzing TikTok's predicament,

and will use South Korea as a case study with one of our local reporters in just a moment.

But first, it's over to Amy Miller,

our senior correspondent for data privacy and security,

and she's based in San Francisco.

Amy, firstly, for those unfamiliar with TikTok, remind us what it is and how many people use it.

Well, TikTok is owned by BiteDance. That's an eight-year-old Chinese social media company.

And it's China's first real global social media sensation, and the company's founder

began pushing to make it go global really from the start. Today it has about 2.4 million active

daily users, most of whom are teenagers, and it's one of the most frequently downloaded apps in the

world with two billion downloads

...