A video of a specially abled man interacting with and addressing children and working professionals is viral online with the false claim that he is the founder of Chinese social media platform TikTok.
BOOM found that the claims are false; the viral videos have misidentified the man who, in reality, is a Chinese motivational speaker Chen Zhou and not the founder of TikTok.
The viral video carries two clips--the first shows the man interacting with the students and the second shows him addressing a crowd of adults.
One of the users on X (formerly Twitter) posted the video with a caption saying, "Founder & Chairman of Tik-Tok. Nothing is Impossible…."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The video is circulating with a similar caption on Facebook.
Click here to view.
Fact Check
BOOM first performed a keyword search related to 'TikTok Founder' on Google and found numerous news articles about Zhang Yiming, the primary founder of the Chinese technology giant ByteDance, renowned for its short-form video-sharing platform TikTok.
We observed that Yiming bears no resemblance to the person featured in the viral video.
We then conducted a reverse image search on a key frame from the viral video, which led us to discover another video featuring the same individual on the Chinese video-sharing platform Douyin, where the person was identified as Chen Zhou.
A South China Morning Post article dated June 3, 2023, reports on Zhou, stating that "Chen Zhou lost both legs in a train accident and has been dubbed the “legless warrior” on mainland social media for public talks raising awareness about disabilities. The 41-year-old was born to a poor family in a village in Shandong province. His parents divorced and left him when he was a little boy to be raised by his grandfather."
The report further talks about Chen's financial struggle, trying different jobs in life and finally becoming a motivational speaker as part of his approach to reach people in a meaningful way.
In 2014, TEDx Talks uploaded a video on its official YouTube channel featuring Chen where he discussed about living a meaningful life despite being without legs.
Below, one can find a visual comparison between the individual featured in the viral video, motivational speaker Chen Zhou, and TikTok founder Zhang Yiming.
