Bytedance — which investors valued at more than $30 billion recently, putting it more in the financial league of Airbnb or SpaceX than of Buzzfeed or Vice — has assembled a confederation of these buzzy new apps. And it has made no secret of its desire to dominate phone screens across the rest of the world, too.

The company says it uses artificial intelligence technology to figure out what users like, then makes sure they are fed more and more of it. Read a few articles on the trade spat between the United States and China, and soon your Toutiao feed will be populated with news on international relations. Watch a bunch of stand-up comedy shows, and before long the app will suggest new comics who might appeal.

Bytedance has spent top dollar hiring engineers and software experts to fine-tune its recommendation technology.

“It’s like having a chef in your house who knows what kind of food you like,” said Xu Qinglu, a 22-year-old student and Toutiao user in Beijing.

“I think the app is not harmful,” she added. “The people who use it should be responsible for their own behavior.”

At an event in Beijing last month, Mr. Zhang said he hoped that more than half of the company’s users would come from outside China within the next three years. At the moment, he said, one in 10 of its users was overseas.

First, though, the company needs to continue thriving in China. Bytedance’s detractors say that salty, unwholesome material — the sort that has the Chinese government on edge these days — is exactly what the company’s apps have specialized in, and is a major reason for its popularity.