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Lemon8, a photo-sharing app from Bytedance, and RedNote, a Shanghai-based content-sharing platform, saw surge in popularity in the US as “TikTok refugees” move to alternative platforms ahead of a possible ban.
Now, a law that could shut down TikTok in the U.S. threatens to engulf these Chinese social media apps and others emerging as alternatives to TikTok, legal experts say.
As of Wednesday, RedNote is known as Xiaohongshu in China — was the top free app in the US iOS store, with Lemon8 coming in second.
The US Supreme Court must rule on the constitutionality Act to protect Americans from programs controlled by a foreign adversaryor PAFACA, which would ban the TikTok app in the US unless its Beijing-based owner ByteDance gets rid of it by January 19.
While the legislation specifically mentions TikTok and ByteDance, experts say its scope is broad and could open Washington up to targeting additional Chinese programs.
“Chinese social media apps, including Lemon8 and RedNote, could also find themselves banned under this law,” Tobin Marcus, head of US policy and politics at New York-based research firm Wolfe Research, told CNBC.
CNBC experts said that if the TikTok ban is upheld, it is unlikely that the law will allow potential substitutes to come from China without some form of disqualification.
PAFACA automatically applies to Lemon8 because it is a subsidiary of ByteDance, while RedNote could fall under the law if its average monthly user base in the U.S. continues to grow, Marcus said.
The legislation prohibits the distribution, maintenance or provision of Internet hosting services by any “application controlled by a foreign adversary.”
These apps include apps related to ByteDance or TikTok or a social media company that is controlled by a “foreign adversary” and has been determined to pose a significant threat to national security.
The law’s wording is “quite broad” and would give President-elect Donald Trump the ability to decide which entities pose a significant threat to national security, said Carl Tobias, the Williams Professor of Law at the University of Richmond.
Xiaomen Lu, director of geotechnology at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, told CNBC that the law is likely to prevail even if its implementation and enforcement is delayed. Despite this, she expects that Chinese applications in the US will continue to be subject to increased regulatory measures.
“The TikTok case has set a new precedent for Chinese apps to be targeted and potentially shut down,” Lu said.
She added that other Chinese apps may be affected increased control this year include popular Chinese e-commerce platform Temu and Shein. US officials accused the program of creating a data riskaccusations similar to those charged by TikTok.
The fate of TikTok depends on the Supreme Court after the platform and its parent company submitted lawsuit against the US government, claiming that reference to PAFACA violates constitutional protections for free speech.
TikTok’s argument is that the law is unconstitutional as applied to them specifically, not that it’s unconstitutional per se, Cornell law professor Gautam Hans said. “So whether TikTok wins or loses, the law can still apply to other companies,” he said.
The mandate defined by the law is broad enough to apply to a variety of Chinese programs considered a threat to national security, beyond traditional TikTok-style social networks, Hans said.
Meanwhile, Trump has urged the US Supreme Court delay the implementation of PAFACA so that he can pursue a “policy decision” after taking office. Democratic lawmakers also called on Congress and President Joe Biden to extend the deadline of January 19.
