Things aren’t looking good for TikTok in the US. Thanks to a bill passed in April 2024, the government is set to pull the plug on the video-sharing app on January 19, if its Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance doesn’t find a buyer to take control of its operations on American soil. This comes amid longstanding fears about Chinese influence over the app, linked to potential spyware and cognitive warfare conspiracies.

For many, the so-called TikTocalypse is as big a deal as it sounds. As one of the country’s biggest social media platforms, TikTok has more than 100 million users in the US, and thousands of content creators, who could lose their living overnight. “I feel like they're stripping away a major element of free speech in the US, and taking away a community I built brick by brick,” creator Elysia Berman told Dazed last week.

According to a Bloomberg article shared earlier today (January 14), Elon Musk was poised to step in and ‘save the day’ by striking a high-profile deal that pleases ByteDance and the government of China. Bloomberg reports that one scenario under discussion with Chinese officials includes Musk’s X (FKA Twitter) taking the reins. Musk has previously been outspoken about the sale of TikTok, posting in April: “In my opinion, TikTok should not be banned in the USA, even though such a ban may benefit the X platform. Doing so would be contrary to freedom of speech and expression. It is not what America stands for.”

In response to news of collaboration with the Tesla billionaire, though, a TikTok official has told the BBC: “We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction.” Plus, the company has repeatedly said that it won’t sell the US arm of its operations.

Even if a US company did assume control of TikTok – which would likely require the support of incoming president Donald Trump – users might find themselves searching for a new home. See: the exodus from Twitter/X after Musk’s takeover. In that spirit, we’ve gathered a bunch of the front-running TikTok alternatives below.

REDNOTE (AKA XIAOHONGSHU)

As fears about a TikTok ban grew this week, another Chinese short-form video platform shot to the top of the free app charts on the Apple App Store. Its name? Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote in English. Launched in 2013, RedNote is described as “China’s answer to Instagram” and also incorporates elements of sites like Pinterest. With over 300 million monthly active users, it could be well-positioned to take on board all of TikTok’s exiles.

Needless to say, it’s slightly ironic that the US government’s security fears have pushed users en masse toward yet another Chinese app, which will presumably raise all the same concerns. As one X user writes: “The TikTok vacuum getting filled by an app that’s even more Chinese is unfortunately the funniest possible outcome here.”

LEMON8

Lemon8 launched in the US back in 2023. At the time, it garnered users’ interest as a TikTok alternative amid rumours of... another upcoming TikTok ban. However, it didn’t really take off as much as expected. Now that TikTok is on in the firing line once more, Lemon8 has reentered the conversation courtesy of a significant publicity push, including TikTok posts tagged #lemon8partner.

There’s just one hitch (but it is quite a big one). Lemon8 is also owned by ByteDance, which additionally runs apps such as CapCut and Douyin, TikTok’s heavily censored counterpart in China. The US law that demands divestment from TikTok, or its widespread ban, applies generally to all apps owned or operated by ByteDance or any of its subsidiaries, meaning that Lemon8’s future is also very much under threat.

TRILLER

Launched in 2015, the American short-form video app Triller has made no secret of trying to poach TikTok’s creators. Recently, it even launched a website – savemytiktoks.com – that explicitly enables users to back up and upload their old TikToks. While it has tens of millions of users, though, it’s not usually considered one of the main competitors, partly due to its past controversies regarding pay disputes, unpaid royalties, and bots.

INSTAGRAM REELS

There’s a common meme about Instagram Reels, the short-form video section of Instagram (owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta). Someone shows their friend a funny meme on Reels, and the friend says: “Yeah, I saw that three months ago on TikTok.” But TikTok’s downfall could be Instagram’s gain, as users search for alternative apps with an existing reputation and massive in-built userbase.

A similar thing happened with Threads, which was rolled out amid Elon Musk’s takeover of X, gaining hundreds of millions of users in a relatively short time. This was partly thanks to people linking their Instagram accounts, and Threads itself still very much a work in progress, but Instagram Reels are already widely watched, so might experience more success. The question is: do you really want all of social media usage to be mediated by Zuck?

YOUTUBE SHORTS

Another big name that could snatch up the TikTok cast-offs is YouTube, which has gone hard on short-form video in recent years. Besides its in-built audience, the platform can also pull from a vast music library – something that helped give TikTok its good name. It would require some reworking of the existing format, though, which often features snippets of the platform’s longer videos, rather than the kind of immediate and gripping content designed specifically for a short-form feed.

WILL THE BAN ACTUALLY GO FORWARD?

We’ve been here plenty of times before, since Trump’s proposed ban in 2020 – enough to be slightly suspicious about the new TikTok ban actually going through. Confusingly, it’s now Trump himself who has asked the Supreme Court to pause the law, which would come into effect one day before his inauguration and apparently impede his “ability to manage the United States’ foreign policy”. 

In 2024, Trump also appeared to support TikTok as a buffer against a Mark Zuckerberg social media monopoly, saying in a CNBC interview: “Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.” It also probably helps that Trump himself has almost 15 million followers on the app, which is of increasing importance in elections across the globe.

So, what happens next? We might have to wait until January 19 to find out.

... OR JUST LOG OFF

To some extent, every platform offers more of the same. Addictive algorithms. Declining attention spans. Right-wing weirdos. A sense of overwhelming doom. In the end, logging off and touching grass might be the only real solution to all our social media woes.