Some of the possible alternatives to TikTok have their own problems
We’re awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of TikTok v. Garland. The hugely popular short video social media app, with more than 170 million American users, is in a last-ditch legal effort not to get banned in the U.S after Congress overwhelmingly passed a law targeting TikTok — which is owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance — as a threat to national security.
If the law is upheld, on Jan. 19, U.S. platforms would no longer be allowed to host or offer the app for download. Some users have started looking for alternatives, which might have their own problems.
With the long fought-over TikTok ban finally appearing imminent, “we’ve seen over the last few days people are trying out or at least downloading some alternative apps from China, such as RedNote,” said Damian Rollison at AI marketing firm SOCi.
RedNote has been the top free download at the Apple App Store recently; it’s owned by a different Chinese company than TikTok and also features short videos.
“I would consider that to be more of a protest vote against TikTok being banned — similar to the flight to Mastodon or Bluesky when people didn’t want to use X anymore,” Rollison said.
All this app-churning might not last, thinks Jeremy Goldman at Emarketer: “Often big influxes of users check out a new social-media app and don’t necessarily stick around.”
And some users will likely shift to U.S.-based competitors, like Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, per Damian Rollison.
But “there is no other app that really fills the need that TikTok has supplied,” he added. “The recommendation algorithm is big, because it continues to feed you content, and TikTok has done a good job of figuring out what people will find interesting.”
China protects its social-media algorithms as crucial to the national interest.
Meaning the spread of apps like RedNote in the U.S. could “raise the same concerns that TikTok and ByteDance have, because they’re Chinese-controlled,” said Mark Ostrau at Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick and West.
Keep in mind: the law that allows TikTok to be banned “actually applies to any Chinese or, for that matter Russian or North Korean or Iranian social media site,” he added.
The government can target any site that’s at least 20% owned by an individual or company in one of those “adversary” countries, has over 1 million active monthly users, and whose tech and operations U.S. officials determine pose a threat to national security.
“Anything China does in the technology space is a potential concern. So, is it safe to move to another Chinese social-media app? Well, maybe for a short period of time,” Ostrau said.
But Ostrau wouldn’t recommend investing much time or money in a Chinese-owned TikTok alternative for the long term.