Every screen on the planet, by Emily Baker-White

An FP Book Review

‘Every screen on the planet: The secret story of TikTok’ by Emily Baker-White, is a comprehensive history of TikTok from well before the platform became the site that we know today.

The book outlines how the company navigates global politics including working in both the United States and China.

It also shows the power of companies that hold all of our data and use it to make profits at all costs, outlining that we don’t know exactly what they’re doing with it.

The book reveals so much about the company’s government relations and lobbying. This particularly centres around its near shut down in the US because of the question of storage of Americans data in China and access to this by officials.

This includes how President Trump went from wanting to shut TikTok down in his first term in office, to positioning himself as its saviour when he returned after the Biden administration. It shares how TikTok was banned from India and moved out of Hong Kong following political pressure.

Just as other corporations have over the years, Tik Tok used the tried and tested tag line that they were ‘too big to ban’, with more than 150 million active users in the US and more than 1.5 billion globally. The counter argument, of course, is that that there should be strong regulation because of their reach.

The extensive work of lobbyists across the globe to keep Tik Tok operating is mind boggling and shows the power that multi-billion-dollar corporations have in influencing laws. Lobbyists walked the halls, they commissioned research to show the impact of Tik Tok on the economy, gave talking points to Tik Tok influencers, encouraged influencers to directly lobby their congressmen – the list goes on.  

The book also outlines how Tik Tok used the platform users themselves to fight any introduction of laws or challenges to break Tik Tok down. This included a pop up that appeared for users to ‘let congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote NO’ to a ‘TikTok shutdown’. This resulted in offices being overwhelmed with calls calling on them to abandon any changes.

This book is about the history of a tech platform. But it’s also about rights, data and politics. Above all it’s a book about power – the power that large corporations hold and the way they use it to control the way we interact, think and move throughout the world.

30 April 2026