 | |||||
| Developer(s) | ByteDance | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial release | May 2020 | ||||
| Stable release(s) | |||||
| |||||
| Available in | 6 languages | ||||
List of languages English, Indonesian, Japanese, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese | |||||
| Type | Video sharing | ||||
| License | Proprietary | ||||
| Website | lemon8-app | ||||
Lemon8 is a social media app owned by ByteDance. First launched in 2020, it has been likened to Xiaohongshu.
The app was first launched in Japan in May 2020 [1] and hit 1 million downloads in March 2022. [2] It launched in the United States and United Kingdom in February 2023 following restrictions on TikTok in the United States, [3] resulting in it becoming one of the most-downloaded apps on the US App Store a month later. [4] The app is listed under the Singapore-based Heliophilia Pte Ltd. [5]
Content on the app has been described as "a cross between Instagram and Pinterest". [6]
US lawmakers have expressed concerns with Lemon8 due to its connection with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. Lindsay Gorman has stated "it has to do with gathering information on users and it has the same ownership structure, being a child of ByteDance, so I think the same issues are going to come up". [1]
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), Title II of Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law 95–223, 91 Stat. 1626, enacted October 28, 1977, is a United States federal law authorizing the president to regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States. The act was signed by President Jimmy Carter on December 28, 1977.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
Xiaohongshu, also known as RED, is a social media and e-commerce platform. It has been described as "China's answer to Instagram", and is sometimes referred to as "Chinese Instagram".
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed with a smart phone app.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. In March 2024, Zhang's personal wealth was estimated at US$41.2 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the second-richest person in China, after Zhong Shanshan. On November 4, 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021. According to Reuters, Zhang maintains over 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights.
Shanghai Moonton Technology Co. Ltd., commonly known as Moonton, is a Chinese multinational video game developer and publisher owned by the Nuverse subsidiary of ByteDance and based in Shanghai, China. It is best known for the mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang released in July 2016.
Huddles (originally Clash, Byte (via Acquisition), and later Huddles) was an American short-form video hosting service and creator monetization platform social network where users could create looping videos that are between 2–16 seconds long. It was created by a team led by Brendon McNerney and PJ Leimgruber who formerly worked together at NeoReach, Inc. Dom Hofmann was involved as the architect of much of the code, as the founder of Byte, a successor to Vine, which Hofmann co-founded, until the project was sold to Clash App, Inc. and subsequently renamed.
Zynn was a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by Kuaishou, a Beijing-based internet technology company established in 2011 by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao. It was used to create and share short videos, and it pays its users for using the app and referring others. Zynn was launched on May 7, 2020. It became the most-downloaded app in the App Store in the same month. It has also been criticized for being a "pyramid scheme", and it has faced accusations of plagiarism and stealing content. Aside from Zynn in North America, Kuaishou is available under the name Kwai in Russia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, America, India, and the Middle East. Kwai used to be available in Australia and the United States on the App Store, but was removed at an unknown date. Zynn was permanently shut down on the 20th of August, 2021.
Triller is an American video-sharing social networking service that was first released for iOS and Android in 2015. The service allows users to create and share short-form videos, including videos set to, or automatically synchronized to, music using artificial intelligence technology. It initially operated as a video editing app before adding social networking features.
U.S. WeChat Users Alliance (USWUA) v. Trump was a court case pending before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction on September 20, 2020, blocking the Trump administration's ban order against WeChat based on concerns raised about harm to First Amendment rights and the hardships imposed on a minority community using the app as a primary means of communication. The lawsuit was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
TikTok v. Trump was a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed in September 2020 by TikTok as a challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order of August 6, 2020. The order prohibited the usage of TikTok in five stages, the first being the prohibition of downloading the application. On September 27, 2020, a preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Carl J. Nichols blocking enforcement of that executive order. The lawsuit, by then captioned TikTok v. Biden, was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.
Many countries have imposed past or ongoing restrictions on the video sharing social network TikTok. Bans from government devices usually stem from national security concerns over potential access of data by the Chinese government. Other bans have cited children's well-being and offensive content such as pornography.
There are reports of TikTok censoring political content related to China and other countries as well as content from minority creators. TikTok says that its initial content moderation policies, many of which are no longer applicable, were aimed at reducing divisiveness and were not politically motivated.
In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from then-president Donald Trump, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that TikTok owner ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.
Josh is a video-sharing social networking service, owned by VerSe Innovation – an Indian technology company based in Bangalore, India. Josh is an Indian short video app that was launched in immediately after the Indian Government banned TikTok and other Chinese apps in June 2020. The founders of the platform have promoted the app as the “Instagram for Bharat” referring to their focus on the Indian audience that speaks its own regional and state languages. Josh was among the top 10 most downloaded apps social and entertainment apps in India of 2021 and had 150 million monthly active users as per April 2022.
TikTok has sparked concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the Chinese government, leading to restrictions and bans in the United States.
The RESTRICT Act is a proposed law that was first introduced in the United States Senate on March 7, 2023. Introduced by Senator Mark Warner, the Act proposed that the Secretary of Commerce be given the power to review business transactions involving certain information and communications technologies products or services when they are connected to a "foreign adversary" of the United States, and pose an "undue and unacceptable risk" to the national security of the United States or its citizens.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) is an act of Congress that was signed into law on April 24, 2024, as part of Public Law 118-50. It would ban social networking services within 270 to 360 days if they are determined by the president of the United States and relevant provisions to be a "foreign adversary controlled application"; the definition covers websites and application software, including mobile apps. The act explicitly applies to ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries—including TikTok—without the need for additional determination. It ceases to be applicable if the foreign adversary controlled application is divested and no longer considered to be controlled by a foreign adversary of the United States.
TikTok has been involved in a number of lawsuits since its founding, with a number of them relating to TikTok's data collection techniques.
TikTok, et al. v. Garland is a lawsuit brought by social media company TikTok against the United States government. Chinese internet technology company ByteDance and its subsidiary TikTok allege that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, an act of Congress that bans certain apps unless sold by their owners, violates the First Amendment by imposing an unfeasible deadline for divestment, effectively removing the app.
