Without a savior, TikTok will be banned. These are the applications that users could replace it with
cnn
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There are three days left until a possible ban on TikTok in the United States, but many users have already said goodbye to the application and are looking for alternatives.
Influencer Jasmine Chiswell posted a video on Tuesday in which she showed her discontent with a text that said: “Me saying goodbye to 18 million best friends because TikTok is going to be banned,” with sad face and broken heart emojis.
Fear of the ban increased after a report published Tuesday afternoon by The Information that said TikTok will be completely shut down to users in the US on Sunday if it does not win its appeal to the Supreme Court or if it does not find an American owner by then. Before that report was published, many people expected that US app stores would remove TikTok, but that existing users would still be able to access the app on their phones, at least for a while.
Still, there is no shortage of TikTok-like apps eager to welcome those users—who now call themselves “TikTok refugees”—to their platforms. But the apps that surged in popularity this week aren’t TikTok’s obvious rivals, like Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlight, or X.
Instead, a bevy of new apps have emerged in app stores this week, including RedNote (also known as Xiaohongshu), Lemon8, Clapper, Flip and Fanbase.
The competition to become the new home for TikTok users is a reminder that, even after years of efforts by mainstream tech platforms to replicate the short video app’s popular features, users still feel there is no a true TikTok replacement.
“A government that is fair to the people, by the people, does not force its people to use Instagram Reels,” creator Mike Gottschalk said in a TikTok video. “Instagram is stealing my data the same way TikTok does. We can hope that there is a new app that will come in like a knight in shining armor and replace TikTok, but I think we all know it will just be Reels. And that’s how empires fall.”
At the top of the Apple and Google app store charts this week is RedNote or Xiaohongshu, an app from China that is reminiscent of Instagram and is popular because users share tips on travel, makeup and fashion there.
Many of the American users who left the app this week suggested they were doing so out of spite for the U.S. government, which banned TikTok over national security concerns related to its China-based parent company.
“I give all my data to China. Here you go, China, in exchange for keeping my TikTok, you can have all my information,” said a user who goes by the name @Thiqydusty in a video.
But the influx of new users to RedNote—previously mostly confined to the Chinese-speaking world—has also produced some fun moments of cultural exchange: users offering Mandarin classes, sharing information about Internet slang in Chinese and English, and asking that the application implements automatic subtitles in both languages.
Lemon8, a Pinterest-like app from TikTok parent company ByteDance, has also gained popularity this week. The company began promoting the app to American users in early 2023, when TikTok CEO Shou Chew testified in Congress about the app’s data protection practices.
But both platforms could be subject to a law that bans apps controlled by a U.S. “foreign adversary” — the same law that is expected to ban TikTok. Some security experts have already expressed concern that RedNote could also transmit US user data to the Chinese government and that many Americans will not understand what they are allowing by agreeing to the app’s terms of service, which are only Available in Mandarin.
“This definition includes TikTok and any other social network and mobile app that is controlled by China or shareholders connected to China,” said Elettra Bietti, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University. He added that it would be the president’s responsibility to issue public notice that the platforms were subject to enforcement.
“To me, the proliferation of Chinese apps shows the limits of an app-by-app designation of the law, and also the limited ability of the US government to control how citizens use the internet and in what forum they choose to express themselves,” he said. Bietti.
Of course, there are also non-Chinese alternatives.
Clapper, a short-form video platform that has a live audio chat feature similar to X, told CNN it gained 1.4 million new users in the last week, including 400,000 on Wednesday alone.
And Flip — a shopping-focused short-form video app that’s currently No. 6 on Apple’s App Store — issued an apology to users on Sunday after unexpectedly rapid growth caused the app to be “very slow or completely drop for most users.”
“TikTok audiences are not going to migrate to one destination… I think they are going to go to many different ones, depending on where their communities are and what type of content (they make),” said Jake Maughan, head of influencer marketing at the advertising firm BENlabs.
Large platforms like Instagram and YouTube will almost certainly benefit if TikTok disappears, despite the new competition. Big tech companies have refocused their businesses in recent years to better compete with TikTok, producing a shift in the social media ecosystem from a focus on friends, prioritizing entertainment and new content that keeps people connected for longer. time.
But Snapchat and YouTube downloads fell this week compared to the previous week, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. And although Instagram downloads increased by 2% each week, the number of daily active users was essentially the same as the previous week.
Many users say those apps still lack the magic of TikTok.
Frustrations range from small annoyances — for example, unlike TikTok, you can’t pause an Instagram Reels video unless you keep your finger on the screen — to more esoteric issues, like the community. On TikTok, users say they can be more creative and less careful and will be rewarded for it in the comments, while on Instagram they often receive more negativity.
And because each of the platforms favors slightly different content, success as an influencer on TikTok doesn’t guarantee success on the other apps.
Molinaro told CNN that on TikTok he can “be a little freer, more myself. “I can take away the curating a little bit and just talk freely with (my followers) and have fun with them.”
“TikTok favors realism. I feel like the other platforms are almost a little more vain, whereas TikTok is about showing up and being authentic and a lot of people can relate to that,” creator Stormi Steele told CNN.
Steele is also concerned about losing access to TikTok Shop, the app’s store feature that allows creators to host live sales events. She said her brand, Canvas Beauty, currently earns $2 to $3.5 million per month on TikTok.
Ultimately, though, it’s TikTok’s algorithm that sets the app apart, feeding users videos based on sometimes frighteningly accurate predictions of what they’ll find entertaining, whether they follow those creators or not. Any alternative will need to replicate that algorithm to become a true TikTok replacement.
“The algorithm that TikTok has created and refined is unparalleled. And even the algorithms for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and so on feel dated compared to TikTok,” Maughan said. “TikTok was new. The idea that anyone can go viral, that you can try it, and go from zero to millions (of followers) overnight, — that’s still not found anywhere else.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter contributed to this report.
