TikTok threatened with ban? ByteDance launches “Lemon8”, on the model of Instagram

The art of doubling. While its star platform, TikTok, is threatened with banning in Western countries, the company ByteDance is trying to deploy a new social network, called Lemon8. The platform is inspired by Instagram and Pinterest, the two main players in online photography.

Last week, while TikTok bosses were being questioned by the US Congress, ByteDance quietly urged several influencers to participate in the future first steps of this service, revealed the New York Times. “Become our creator-founders,” ByteDance candidly invited, according to the messages quoted by the newspaper.

According to these documents, Lemon8 should be deployed in 2023 in the United States. It is already downloadable but no announcement has been made. The network has already been used in Japan, Great Britain and Singapore since April 2020. Provisional assessment: 5 million daily users. Long-term goal: to become as viral as TikTok and compete with Instagram, owned by Meta (ex-Facebook).

Photos, brands, and such a controversial algorithm

Like TikTok, Lemon8 is aimed at a young audience. Where its big sister has made many teenagers addicted to its videos of a few seconds, modifiable at will, the application is intended to be based on the sharing of images. She currently focuses on beauty, fashion and well-being. A showcase for advertisers in this area, as Pinterest and Instagram already are.

Family tradition obliges, Lemon8 benefits from the same algorithmic principles as TikTok, in particular “For you”, the tab which highlights content to which users are not subscribed. A controversial module: many Western leaders accuse China, which controls ByteDance, of biasing these recommendations to manipulate public opinion.

With this application, ByteDance clings to the Western market, while the United States seems increasingly determined to ban TikTok, and Europeans are very attentive to the American decision. President Joe Biden is demanding that ByteDance resell TikTok to an American company to cut off all data flow to the Chinese regime. If the company does not comply, he threatens to ban the application used by 150 million Americans.

Last week, the boss of TikTok in the United States tried to reassure that no data was transmitted to Beijing. Without convincing. Because a law allows the government of Xi Jinping to requisition the data of Chinese companies. TikTok denies any transfers and claims that its American activities remain in the United States. But last November, the application recognized that its European data was available from China.

Same fate as TikTok?

Since then, TikTok claims to have reinforced its separation from its parent company. But nothing helps. User data privacy, content moderation driven by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), misinformation, addiction, dangerous challenges, mental and physical health of children and adolescents… The list of grievances against TikTok in the West is long, and could rub off on lemon8.

Recently, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, the European Union and New Zealand have banned the possibility of installing TikTok on the phones of civil servants or civil service executives, thus seeking to prevent attempts to espionage from China. Same thing for NATO. What to presume of the fate of Lemon8? Answer at the beginning of May, date of its official launch across the Atlantic.