Social media platform TikTok is reportedly looking to massively grow its e-commerce business this year to $20 billion.

According to Bloomberg, the ByteDance-owned app is hoping to more than quadruple the size of its worldwide e-commerce operations from $4.4 billion in gross merchandise value in 2022. This figure represents the worth of total goods sold through TikTok Shop, the app's online marketplace.

While the company is facing legal challenges in the US and European markets have been slow to adopt the short-form video app as an e-commerce platform, the report notes that TikTok is looking towards Southeast Asia with significant adoption in markets such as Indonesia.

ByteDance’s Chinese app Douyin, which serves as an equivalent to TikTok in the company’s home market, has built up a successful commerce model around its 150 million users. The company is seeking to export this approach internationally, despite the concept of 'live shopping’ – combining impulse buying with entertainment – failing to gain significant traction outside of the region and only representing a fraction of ByteDance’s $80 billion 2022 revenues.

Elsewhere, a former ByteDance executive has alleged that the ruling Chinese Communist Party accessed the user data of protestors and civil rights activists in Hong Kong. The claims, made in a wrongful dismissal lawsuit brought by the ex-empoyee in a California court, alleged that a committee of party members accessed data including network information, Sim card identifications and IP addresses.

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