I'm the founder of [redacted], an unofficial TikTok API.
It started as a small side project, but now it has been growing quickly and we even have clients from Fortune-500 companies.<p>The next step is registration as a corporate, fund-raising, hiring, and some other stuff that are necessary for a company to grow.<p>But I'm not sure if that's legal or what kind of troubles we will have from TikTok.<p>So far, we have only been contacted by TikTok representatives for a trademark issue, though they were helpful and we fixed the issue quickly.
Not legal advice, but the legal issue is if their terms of service allow it; the practical issue is whether they block/rate limit you (they seem fine with it, So Far...); the business issue is whether they like your idea and incorporate it <i>thanks for the free R&D!</i><p>There's a general history of peasants working on someone else's platform. The platform tends to expand - url shorteners, some utilities for windows, music programs for apple.<p>You need some USP that tiktok can't or doesn't want to copy - is that possible?
With the sort of growth expectations you have, get actual legal advice.<p>On the overall concept, consider that youtube-dl provides an unofficial (command-line) API to YouTube, and review the legal commentary in support of youtube-dl after its recent takedown at GitHub.<p>But what's key is not really the legal part (as
hyperpallium2 rightly pointed out) the terms of service and the risk of TikTok taking your company's oxygen away.