 | |||||
| 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 lifestyle community powered by TikTok.
The app was first launched in Japan in May 2020 and hit 1 million downloads in March 2022. It launched in the United States in February 2023.
Content on the app has been described as "a cross between Instagram and Pinterest". [1]
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". [2]
Kevin A. Mayer is an American business executive. He is currently the co-founder and co-CEO of Candle Media. He was briefly CEO of TikTok, and COO of its parent company ByteDance. Prior to joining TikTok, he was a senior executive at Disney for more than 15 years, including as head of Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International.
ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.
TikTok, whose mainland Chinese and Hong Kong 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 or the web.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. Zhang is one of the richest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$45.6 billion as of October 2024, according to Forbes and US$43.1 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 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. The surging global popularity of TikTok made Zhang the richest man in China in 2024.
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 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.
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.
Kelly Zhang is a Chinese businesswoman. She is the chief executive officer of ByteDance China. She is responsible for overseeing the operations and management of the company's China portfolio, including the video-sharing platform Douyin and the news aggregator Toutiao.
Shou Zi Chew is a Singaporean business executive who has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of TikTok, an online video platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance, since 2021.
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 online video platform TikTok has had worldwide a social, political, and cultural impact since its global launch in September 2016. The platform has rapidly grown its userbase since its launch and surpassed 2 billion downloads in October, 2020. It became the world's most popular website, ahead of Google, for the year 2021.
TikTok Music was a music streaming app owned by ByteDance that was launched in July 2023. The Service allows users to listen to, download, and share songs. The service was shut down on November 28, 2024.
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, Inc. v. Garland is a lawsuit brought by social media company TikTok against the United States government. Chinese internet technology company ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiary TikTok, Inc. claim that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, the Bill of Attainder Clause of Article One, Section Nine, and the Due Process Clause and Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The law bans or requires divestment of social media apps meeting specified criteria that are owned by foreign corporations from, or by corporations owned by foreign nationals from, countries designated as U.S. foreign adversaries and that have been determined by the President to present a significant national security threat, and explicitly defines TikTok and any application operated by a ByteDance subsidiary as a "foreign adversary controlled application" under the law.
