Every Screen on the Planet :The Secret Story of TikTok
Every Screen on the Planet :The Secret Story of TikTok
hardback
Published:
2 October, 2025
Description
'Engaging... this excellent book lays out the damage of letting arbitrary political power intervene in business'
Financial Times
'A must-read account from a heroic reporter who has taken on the world's most dangerous tech company' – Chris Miller, award-winning author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
Every Screen on the Planet is the dramatic, untold story of TikTok. Charting its rise from obscurity into the world’s most valuable startup, Emily Baker-White relates how its visionary founder, ByteDance CEO Zhang Yiming, reshaped the global internet from a place where you searched for information to one where information comes to you. Billions of users were soon hooked.
But there was a cost to such success. Soon, TikTok was embroiled in accusations of surveillance, censorship and user manipulation, attracting controversy from India and Europe to the US. After Baker-White – a Harvard-trained lawyer and investigative reporter – revealed that Chinese engineers could access Americans’ private information, a team of ByteDance employees even used the app to track her.
Based on unprecedented access to internal documents, leaked recordings and accounts from whistle-blowers inside the company, Every Screen on the Planet reveals how TikTok became trapped between China and the USA, desperate to survive. It is the story of how your attention became the world’s most valuable – and dangerous – commodity.
'Revealing. A story about power, control and the hidden battles shaping what we see online' – Parmy Olson, bestselling author of Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9781035049264 |
| ISBN10 | 1035049260 |
| Number Of Pages | 368 |
| Item Weight | 576 g |
| Product Dimensions | 163 x 246 x 32 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Pan Macmillan |
| Format | hardback |
Media Reviews
Is TikTok spying on you? It already has spied on Emily Baker-White, in the course of her pathbreaking research into the company's out-of-control surveillance and its legal subjugation to Beijing's spymasters. Deeply researched and nuanced in its judgments, this is a must-read account from a heroic reporter who has taken on the world's most dangerous tech company -- Chris Miller, bestselling author of Chip War
Revealing. A story about power, control and the hidden battles shaping what we see online. A smart and surprisingly deep dive that will make you rethink what's going on behind TikTok's endless scroll. -- Parmy Olson, bestselling author of Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World
Engaging… this excellent book lays out the damage of letting arbitrary political power intervene in business. -- Financial Times
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Emily Baker-White works as a technology reporter for Forbes. She previously covered tech at Buzzfeed News. Before becoming a journalist, Baker-White earned her JD from Harvard Law School and practised criminal defence law, launching a multi-year investigation into police misconduct on Facebook. Every Screen on the Planet is her groundbreaking investigation into the intricate landscape of TikTok and ByteDance.