Jan 09, 2025 11:21:00

TikTok encourages users to escape to 'Lemon8' ahead of TikTok ban

When the so-called '

TikTok Ban Act ' comes into effect on January 19, 2025, TikTok will have to choose between suspending its service in the United States or selling its business to an American company. With the law about to come into effect, TikTok has been encouraging users to switch to a similar app called 'Lemon8,' which was released in 2020.

TikTok pushes users to Lemon8 as ban looms
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/07/tiktok-lemon8-ban-sponsored-posts

Lemon8 is a community platform called Shareee, which was launched in 2020 and reborn as a lifestyle sharing app in 2021. Like TikTok, it is an app developed by ByteDance.

Lemon8 - Discover something new every day
https://www.lemon8-app.com/

According to news site Axios, TikTok has seen a large number of sponsored videos promoting Lemon8 in recent weeks.

The content states the advantages of Lemon8 as follows, and then guides users to Lemon8, saying, 'Now that the government is trying to ban TikTok, if you want to go somewhere that is not 100% controlled, come to Lemon8.'

・TikTok has a backup app called 'Lemon8'
・You can automatically log in with the same account as TikTok
Followers will be carried over
When you install Lemon8, a popup will be added to your TikTok profile, allowing you to log in just by tapping it.

Lemon8 is an app that has been around for about four years since its renewal, so it is not surprising that TikTok would promote its own app.

However, Axios points out that while previous posts were just 'There's this app,' recently the posts have begun to encourage users to switch from TikTok, with messages like 'Your TikTok username can also be used with Lemon8.'

A ByteDance spokesperson told Axios that the integration of TikTok's backend with Lemon8 was unrelated to the TikTok ban.

Although Lemon8 still has a smaller number of users than TikTok, its popularity is steadily growing, with the number of daily active users reaching just over 1 million as of October 2024, double the number seen in the same period last year.

Incidentally,

the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a challenge to the TikTok ban, and President-elect Trump has requested that the law's implementation be postponed.

President-elect Trump asks Supreme Court to postpone implementation of TikTok ban law - GIGAZINE