ByteDance is making an attempt to repeat the success of TikTok with Lemon8, its newest social media app, stories CNBC. Appearing as a mix of Instagram and Pinterest, Lemon8 has rapidly exploded in reputation, being the second most downloaded life-style app within the US over the past month, leaping 693 positions, in response to information.ai. The app was first launched in Japan in 2020, and since its international launch on March 29 has been downloaded greater than 17 million occasions worldwide.
Regardless of this, issues stay relating to ByteDance’s method to privateness, and its ties to the Chinese language authorities. Regardless of its claims to not share non-public data, Chinese language legislation requires the corporate handy over any information, together with delicate data comparable to geolocational information and contacts, to the Chinese language authorities if requested. This regulation has seen the app banned on authorities telephones in numerous places such because the USA, UK, and EU.
Nevertheless, the USA is contemplating going additional and banning TikTok completely, with the state of Montana being the primary to institute a ban on the app on private units earlier this month, calling the app a nationwide safety threat and accusing it of encouraging harmful actions. On a nationwide scale, President Joe Biden has instructed ByteDance that TikTok faces a federal ban until its Chinese language house owners promote its shares within the app.
When life provides you lemons, make Lemon8?
“It’s definitely attention-grabbing timing. It looks like ByteDance is pushing Lemon8 as a possible various to TikTok,” stated German Marshall Fund senior fellow of rising tech Lindsay Gorman.
“You would see this because the aggressive transfer of an organization that’s making an attempt to increase into totally different shopper markets and segments with extra image-based and longer-form written content material versus solely short-form movies.”
No matter ByteDance’s hopes for Lemon8, the very fact stays that the identical points which have plagued Tiktok will probably proceed. The troublesome laws which requires the corporate to share data with the Chinese language Communist Social gathering stays in place, and ByteDance could face related questions relating to the safety of person information.
Earlier this month, TikTok was fined £12.7 million by the UK’s Info Commissioner’s Workplace for the misuse of youngsters’s information.
