“Sociable” is the newest commentary on essential social media developments and trends from industry expert Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today.
TikTok’s American audience is revolting, because the app switches over to its new, Americanized version.
With TikTok US separating from the worldwide version of the app, and converting to Oracle servers and control, many have raised concerns that the new entity will change to raised align with Republican talking points, on condition that the board of the new TikTok U.S. group was handpicked by the Trump team.
Those concerns have already sparked accusations of censorship, while over the weekend, TikTok suffered significant stability issues, caused, TikTok says, by an influence outage at a U.S. data center.
But the instability, combined with the broader concern in regards to the app’s separation from its Chinese owners, has spooked quite a lot of users, and prompted a sudden uptick in downloads of several alternatives, including:
- UpScrolled – An Instagram-style social platform which saw a lot demand over the weekend that its servers crashed
- Skylight – An open source TikTok alternative, which saw a 150% jump in new user sign-ups over the weekend
- Yope – Not exactly a TikTok alternative, within the entertainment sense, but visual messaging app Yope has seen an enormous rise in Australia, in response to the local teen social media bans, and is now getting attention within the U.S. as well.
Will that trigger a longer-term swing against TikTok, and towards these other platforms, or is that this a short-lived revolt, in response to the news, and things will eventually ease back to the mean?
Well, it’s hard to say, because immediately, many users are accusing the new TikTok management of censoring content.
Many have raised examples of searches for “ICE” and “Minneapolis” failing to display results, or videos related to the newest ICE shooting getting very limited reach. This, potentially, could signal government interference, though TikTok has again blamed any instability, including algorithmic impacts, on the facility outage at certainly one of its U.S. servers.
Could the U.S. government actually look to make use of TikTok as a propaganda vehicle, and a way to sway young voters?
I mean, Trump did say last 12 months that he would make TikTok “100% MAGA” if he could, while there have long been suggestions that the Chinese government censors certain content inside the app, with a view to higher align with a pro-CCP agenda.
It does appear to be the mechanisms, and the need, could potentially be there, especially whenever you consider the broader influence of TikTok within the nation.
I don’t know that I’d put it past the U.S. government to potentially do that, but as yet, we’ve no definitive evidence to suggest such.
So possibly individuals are jumping ship too soon, and possibly this can only be a short-term revolt, before people resume regular activities.
Either way, it’s a trend of note for TikTok, while also, potentially, opening the door for one more social media competitor to step in.
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