TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is paying influencers to promote its other social media platform, Lemon8, as the Senate considers banning the video-sharing giant.
Major Chinese companies could be forced to sell TikTok or face a complete ban from the app if a bill passed by the House of Representatives this month is also passed by the Senate.
Now, the company has been found to be paying TikTok influencers to promote Lemon8, an Instagram clone that features “inspirational” posts about food, beauty, health, and travel.
People familiar with the House-passed bill said the move could be an attempt by ByteDance to circumvent a future TikTok ban by running a high-traffic alternative owned by a Chinese company. He said there is.
One influencer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Post that she was offered $200 to upload a video promoting Lemon8 on TikTok shortly after the House passed a bill banning the popular video platform. .
In the end, she said, it wasn’t enough money to promote something she wasn’t actually using.
ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.
Bronain1, an influencer with 362,700 followers on TikTok, confirmed to the Post that he is working with ByteDance to increase his following on Lemon8, which has just 66 followers.
She posted a video last week saying platforms like Instagram were a godsend when she moved to London two years ago at the age of 20, writing: “I had no idea what to do here.” Ta.
“I went to Lemon8 to find things to do in London and created a bucket list…I found a community of other people doing the same thing as me and learned so many tips and tricks along the way. ” she posted about her experience. “Follow me on Lemon8.”
Last week alone, more than a dozen other TikTok influencers posted videos promoting Lemon8 that included links to download the app. It is unclear whether ByteDance paid them for their posts.
“I found an app for girlies…Keep watching if you’re girly,” one TikTok creator with 174,700 followers using the handle “Alyssa Stevens” posted.
“Lemon8 is a destination for sharing and exploration… there’s something for everyone at Lemon8,” she added.
Rayleen Vega, who has 207,300 followers on TikTok and just 1 follower on Lemon8, posted, “I’m obsessed with this new app Lemon8… I love it so much.”
Similarly, Kolby Shae, who has 755,600 TikTok followers and 8 Lemon8 followers, said: [my hair]”
None of the creators responded to requests for comment.
The bill, Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Enemies, is designed to force the sale of TikTok and cites the app as an example of a threat to American national security.
The company directly names ByteDance as a company controlled by a foreign enemy and says that TikTok’s “successor applications” and “other applications and services developed or provided by ByteDance” must be sold.
But some policy experts told the Post that the bill has loopholes that ByteDance could use to circumvent the ban.
“At this point, this law is still open to interpretation,” a person involved in the House’s drafting of the law told the Post. “This bill was drafted to go after TikTok… There may be other exceptions as well.”
Among the loopholes is a requirement that an app must have an average number of users of more than 1 million to take action. Lemon8 seems to be well below this number.
Similar web research Last July, it was found to have just 6,360 daily active users.
Tom Grant, vice president of research at traffic analyst Uptopia, said the app has been growing recently, with usage accelerating in the U.S. so far, including 19% in March, but not elsewhere. There has been a slowdown in the region, he said, indicating that ByteDance’s campaign may be working.
Last June, ByteDance appointed TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to head Lemon8 in a bid to find further synergies between the two apps.
However, on Apple and Google’s app stores, Lemon8 says its developer is Heliophilia, a private Singaporean company that shares its headquarters with the ByteDance Singapore office, which also states that Lemon8 is not owned by a “foreign adversary.” and may help assemble themselves.
“Anything TikTok can do within its boundaries is a win. If it can use this crisis to grow Lemon8, that’s a win,” one lawyer familiar with the situation told the Post.
“It’s sort of framing the argument that this is only about TikTok, because the same company is telling users that it’s perfectly fine to keep using other apps.”
Jacob Helberg, a senior policy advisor at software company Palantir, told the Post that while there are “different positions and standards” on what is prohibited, the ban in its current form “is a big deal for apps like Lemon8. It will be applied,” he said.
But he said “ByteDance is still trying to kill the bill” until it is signed into law.
