Snapchat, Instagram battle for TikTok’s user base as it faces US ban
Snapchat and Instagram are already poised to take TikTok’s place if the video app has to disappear in the US. Parent company ByteDance, however, has been given a year to find a buyer or face a ban.
ByteDance does not seem to have any intention of selling its American branch of TikTok, which in the past attracted interest from Oracle and Microsoft. Still, it would not be a first for the short-form video creation and sharing app, having been banned in India in 2020 when tensions on the India-China border erupted into deadly violence.
At the time the app had 200 million users, including creators and influencers, far more than the 150 million US users. TikTok seemed unstoppable until latent tensions on the India-China border erupted into deadly violence.
Following these border skirmishes, the Indian government banned the app on 29 June 2020, along with about 50 more Chinese apps. Almost overnight, TikTok was gone. But Indian TikTok’s accounts and videos are still online, frozen in time.
India is also not the only country to have taken the step. In November 2023, Nepal announced its decision to finally ban TikTok following a number of suspensions.
The app offered opportunities to rural Indian fluencers, who for the first time were able to reach a wide audience. Those would never have come without TikTok. The BBC mentions Geet, an Indian influencer wearing only her first name who became a big star on TikTok where she taught ‘American English’ and gave life advice and pep talks. She had 10 million followers on three accounts by the time TikTok was banned.
Granted, Indian alternatives came along, but most disappeared again. It was mostly Instagram that benefited from TikTok’s demise with Reels, and in the US, Snapchat will also be looking to take its place. Snap pointed one of these days to the growing use of Spotlight. And YouTube has Shorts.
The implications for the US could be quite large. Nearly a third of Americans aged 18-29 get their news from TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center.
In India, owner ByteDance did not go to court, but it did in the US. After all, that’s where much of its content comes from. Moreover, ByteDance stands a good chance at the US Supreme Court. After all, the US Congress and Senate decision is based on assumptions about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party that cannot be easily proven. In addition, ByteDance rightly claims that it is already largely an American company and user data is processed locally.
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