TikTok will be banned without a saviour. Here are the alternative apps users are flocking to

The TikTok Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg

NEW YORK CITY — TikTok is still three days away from a likely ban in the United States, but many users are already bidding the app farewell and seeking out alternatives.

Influencer Jasmine Chiswell posted a video Tuesday, showing her frowning over text that reads: “Me saying goodbye to 18 million best friends because TikTok is getting banned,” with sad face and broken heart emojis.

The fear of a ban amped up following a report late Tuesday from The Information that TikTok will shut itself down entirely for US users come Sunday, if it doesn’t win its challenge to the Supreme Court or find an American owner by then. Before the report, many people had expected US app stores to remove TikTok but that existing users could continue accessing the app on their phones, at least for a while.

Still, there is no shortage of TikTok copycat apps eager to welcome those users, now calling themselves “TikTok refugees,” onto their platforms. But the apps surging in popularity this week aren’t the obvious TikTok rivals, like Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlight or X.

Instead, a slate of newer apps have surged on app stores this week, including RedNote (also known as Xiaohongshu), Lemon8, Clapper, Flip and Fanbase.

The competition to become the new home for TikTok users is a reminder that even after yearslong efforts by mainstream, big tech platforms to replicate the short-form video app’s popular features, users still feel there’s no true TikTok replacement.

“A just government for the people, by the people does not force its people to use Instagram Reels,” creator Mike Gottschalk said in a TikTok video. “Instagram is stealing my data in the exact same way TikTok is. We can all pretend that there’s going to be a new app that rides in as a knight in shining armor and replaces TikTok, but I think we all know that it’s just going to be Reels. And that is how empires crumble.”

The alternatives

Topping the charts on Apple’s and Google’s app stores this week: RedNote, or Xiaohongshu, a China-based app reminiscent of Instagram that’s popular for sharing tips on travel, makeup and fashion.

Many of the American users who joined the app this week suggested they were doing so out of spite for the US government, which banned TikTok over national security concerns related to its China-based parent company.

Take away their TikTok, they said, and they’d just join another Chinese app.

“I surrender all my data to China. Here you go, China, in exchange for keeping my TikTok, you can have all my information,” a TikTok user who goes by @Thiqydusty said in a video.

But the influx of new users to RedNote — which was previously confined mainly to the Chinese-speaking world — has also led to some funny moments of cultural exchange in recent days, with users offering up Mandarin lessons, sharing information about Chinese and English internet slang, and calling for the app to implement automatic subtitles in both languages.

Lemon8, a Pinterest-like app from TikTok parent company ByteDance, has also gained newfound popularity this week. The company first began pushing the app to American users in early 2023, when TikTok CEO Shou Chew was hauled before Congress to testify about the app’s data protection practices.

But both of those platforms could ultimately be subject to a law that prohibits apps controlled by a US “foreign adversary” — the same law that’s set to ban TikTok. (Some security experts have already raised concerns that RedNote could also pass along US user data to the Chinese government and that many Americans won’t understand what they’re allowing when they agree to the app’s terms of service, which are only available in Mandarin.)

“This definition includes TikTok and any other social media and mobile application that is controlled by China or by shareholders connected to China,” said Elettra Bietti, assistant professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University. She added that it would be up to the president to issue a public notice that the platforms were subject to enforcement under the law.

“To me, the proliferation of Chinese apps is showing the limits of an app-by-app designation under (the law), and also the US government’s limited ability to control how US citizens use the internet and on which forum they choose to express themselves,” Bietti said.

Of course, there are non-Chinese alternatives, too.

Clapper, a short-form video platform that has a live audio conversation feature similar to X, told CNN that it gained 1.4 million new users in the past week, including 400,000 on Wednesday alone.

And Flip — a shopping-focused short-form video app that’s currently No. 6 on the Apple App Store — posted an apology to users Sunday after unexpectedly rapid growth caused the app to be “either very slow or completely down for most users.”

“Audiences that live on TikTok, they’re not going to go to one single destination… I think they’re going to got to many different ones, depending on where their communities are and what type of content (they make),” said Jake Maughan, head of influencer marketing at advertising firm BENlabs.

Instagram and YouTube in the backseat?

To be sure, mainstream platforms like Instagram and YouTube still almost certainly stand to benefit if TikTok goes away, despite the newfound competition. Big tech companies have in recent years reoriented their businesses to better compete with TikTok, causing a broader shift in the social media ecosystem away from friend-based feeds to prioritizing entertainment and new content that keeps people scrolling longer.

But downloads of Snapchat and YouTube fell this week compared to the week prior, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. And while Instagram downloads were up two per cent week-on-week, the number of daily active users was essentially the same as the previous week.

Many users say those apps are still missing the magic of TikTok.

The frustrations range from small annoyances — for example, unlike on TikTok, you can’t pause an Instagram Reels video unless you hold your finger down on the screen — to more esoteric issues, like community. On TikTok, users say they can be more creative and less polished and they’ll be rewarded for that in the comments, whereas Instagram often has more negativity.

And because each of the platforms favors slightly different content, success as an influencer on TikTok doesn’t guarantee success on the other apps.

Molinaro told CNN that on TikTok, “I get to be a little bit freer, more myself. I get to kind of take the curation away from it, and I just get to talk freely with (my followers) and have fun with them.”

“TikTok favours realism. I feel like the other platforms are almost a little bit more vain, whereas TikTok is all about showing up and being your authentic self and a lot of people can resonate with that,” creator Stormi Steele told CNN.

Steele worries, too, about losing access to TikTok Shop, the app’s storefront feature that lets creators host live selling events. She said her brand, Canvas Beauty, currently earns US$2 million to $3.5 million each month on TikTok.

But ultimately, it’s the TikTok algorithm that sets the app apart, feeding users videos based on sometimes scarily-accurate predictions of what they’ll find entertaining, whether they follow those creators or not. Any alternative will have to replicate that algorithm in order to become a real TikTok replacement.

“The algorithm that TikTok has created and refined is unmatched. And even YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels and whatnot, those algorithms feel antiquated compared to TikTok,” Maughan said. “TikTok, it was novel. The idea that anybody can go viral, and you can shoot your shot, and you can go from zero to millions (of followers) overnight — you still don’t get that anywhere else.”

CNN’s Brian Stelter contributed to this report.

Clare Duffy, CNN