TikTok alternatives: What you need to know about Lemon8, Instagram and YouTube

On Friday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case that will decide TikTok’s fate in the United States. While some users and creators are holding on to the hope that the ban will not go into effect and that they will be able to continue using the app, it appears that judges are poised to uphold the law that is slowly can make it defunct.

As the court’s decision approaches, some of the platform’s roughly 170 million users in the United States are beginning to wonder: Where is everyone going instead?

There have been some murmurs about Lemon8, a highly visual social media app that focuses largely on lifestyle content, which has the same Chinese owner as TikTok, ByteDance. Lemon8, which looks like a hybrid between Instagram and Pinterest, first launched in Japan in 2020 and has slowly rolled out in other countries.

In 2023, while lawmakers in Washington were grilling TikTok’s CEO, ByteDance was quietly pushing creators to join Lemon8, offering potential paid incentives. However, due to its ownership, the platform may be subject to the same law as TikTok.

If Lemon8 were to be banned as well, TikTok users would be largely limited to well-established social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube, which have added features in recent years to compete with TikTok.

Instagram, for example, rolled out its vertical video feature, Reels, in 2020 as a response to the ByteDance-owned platform. At first, some users found Reels left a lot to be desired, but its vertical video format is visually similar to TikTok, and some users have already cross-posted TikTok content there.

YouTube introduced YouTube Shorts that same year, allowing for short-form videos of up to one minute.

And of course there is the traditional YouTube video format. In recent years, TikTok has emphasized longer videosmeaning creators and users alike can be ready to start making and watching video content that works at home on YouTube instead of YouTube Shorts.

Yumna Jawad, a recipe developer and content creator who goes by Feel Good Foodiesaid she felt prepared for the potential ban because she had taken pains to ensure she never relied too much on a single platform in her work.

“I was on Flipboard. I’m trying to figure out Lemon8 and Threads,” said Ms. Jawad, who is 42 and lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. “There’s always a new one coming and I’m always open to trying things.”