TikTok Alternatives: What to Know About Lemon8, Instagram and YouTube

On Friday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case that will determine the fate of TikTok in the United States. While some users and creators are holding out hope that the ban will not go into effect and that they’ll be able to continue using the app, justices seem poised to uphold the law that could slowly render it defunct.

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

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

In 2023, as lawmakers in Washington were grilling TikTok’s chief executive, ByteDance was quietly pushing creators to join Lemon8 and offering potential paid incentives. But because of its ownership, the platform could be subject to the same law as TikTok.

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

Instagram, for instance, rolled out its vertical video feature, Reels, in 2020 as an answer to the ByteDance-owned platform. Initially, some users found that Reels left a lot to be desired, but its vertical video format is visually similar to TikTok, and some users already cross-post TikTok content there.

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

And, of course, there’s the traditional YouTube video format. In recent years, TikTok has been putting an emphasis on longer videos, which means creators and users alike may be primed to begin making and watching video content that seems at home on YouTube, rather than YouTube Shorts.

Yumna Jawad, a recipe developer and content creator who goes by Feel Good Foodie, said she felt prepared for the potential ban because she had taken pains to make sure she never relied too heavily 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 constantly a new one, and I’m always open to trying things out.”