On Friday, along with the feelings of shock and mourning among many users that followed the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a ban on TikTok, came a practical concern: Where is everyone going instead?
In the days leading up to the ruling, there had been some murmurs about Lemon8, a highly visual social media app focused largely on lifestyle content that has the same Chinese owner as TikTok, ByteDance. Resembling a hybrid between Instagram and Pinterest, Lemon8 first launched in Japan in 2020 and has slowly rolled out in other countries.
It wasn’t the first time TikTok users had heard about the app. In 2023, as lawmakers in Washington were grilling TikTok’s chief executive, ByteDance was quietly pushing creators to join the platform and offering potential paid incentives. But because of its ownership, the Lemon8 could be subject to the same law as TikTok.
This week, there has also been a surge of interest in Red Note, a Chinese social media app that is also known as Xiaohongshu, which means “little red book” in Mandarin.
The platform has been billed by some as a knockoff of TikTok, while also drawing comparisons to Pinterest and Instagram. On Tuesday it was the most downloaded free app in the U.S. Apple store, and many Americans who flocked to it began to rally under the hashtag #TikTokrefugee.
The app has put American users in closer contact with people online in China than they have ever been on TikTok; though TikTok is Chinese-owned, it’s not available in China.
If Lemon8 and Red Note were to be banned in the United States as well, TikTok users would largely be limited to long-established social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube, which have added features in recent years to compete with TikTok.
Instagram, for instance, rolled out its vertical video feature, Reels, in 2020 as an answer to the ByteDance-owned platform. Initially, some users found that Reels left a lot to be desired, but its vertical video format is visually similar to TikTok, and some users already cross-post TikTok content there.
YouTube introduced YouTube Shorts the same year, allowing for short-form videos of up to one minute.
And, of course, there’s the traditional YouTube video format. In recent years, TikTok has been putting an emphasis on longer videos, which means creators and users alike may be primed to begin making and watching video content that seems at home on YouTube, rather than YouTube Shorts.
Yumna Jawad, a recipe developer and content creator who goes by Feel Good Foodie, said she felt prepared for the potential ban because she had taken pains to make sure she never relied too heavily on a single platform in her work.
“I was on Flipboard. I’m trying to figure out Lemon8 and Threads,” said Ms. Jawad, who is 42 and lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. “There’s constantly a new one, and I’m always open to trying things out.”
Article by:Source – Madison Malone Kircher
