These 5 apps can replace TikTok, as it faces weak content moderation issues in India

TikTok downloads almost halved between March and May across the world, coinciding with growing negativity around the platform. Here are a few short video format platforms that can replace the Chinese-owned internet giant.

Saturday May 30, 2020 , 4 min Read

With the coronavirus pandemic forcing people to stay indoors, there has been a spike in the social media engagement in the last few months.

According to the latest global market index App Annie, users spent a record $23.4 billion on mobile apps in Q1 2020. This period also saw new downloads crossing 31 billion, growing 15 percent over Q4 2019.

"India and Brazil were the two largest markets by downloads in Q1 2020. In terms of growth, Brazil, India, and Vietnam were the biggest drivers of change from Q4 2019," App Annie stated.

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Undoubtedly, TikTok was the was the most downloaded app across iOS and Android, followed by WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger. Even in 2019, TikTok had topped global app installs.

In less than half a year, the short-form video creation app has gone from 1.5 billion to over two billion downloads. India has been the biggest driver of TikTok installs, generating 611 million lifetime downloads so far — nearly a third of the app's overall downloads.

However, in the last few weeks, users are outraged against the objectionable content promoted on the platform, including acid attacks, rape, violence against animals, and more. Indian users have also been trending #TikTokBan, #TikTokExposed, and #UninstallTikTok on social media.

Following this, the ByteDance-owned app's downloads have slowed down. April has seen a downrate by 34 percent and 28 percent in May. India, being its largest market, the impact has been more intense, with an anti-TikTok (and anti-China) sentiment sweeping across social media.

TikTok downloads almost halved between March and May across the world, coinciding with growing negativity around the platform. However, the biggest gainer in all these are a few short video and social platforms which could be an alternative to the Chinese-owned internet giant. YourStory lists a few of them:

Mitron

The home-grown short video format platform Mitron is basically a clone of TikTok. Developed by IIT-Roorkee student Shivank Agarwal, the app has more than five million installs within the first month of its launch.

Mitron is already in the top 10 spots of the ‘Top Free’ apps on Google Play with a rating of 4.7 stars.

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Incidentally, this surge comes at a time when TikTok’s play store rating has fallen to 2-point-something. The anti-China sentiments caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and other objectional content on TikTok’s platform seems to be the biggest driver for the down-rating of the app.

The app was launched in April this year, and is only 8.03MB in size. Currently, it is available only for Android users.

Bolo Indya

Gurgaon-based Bolo Indya is a vernacular short video creation, discovery, and discussion platform. At present, it supports eight Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, and Gujarati.

The app enables users to create and consume short videos of a maximum duration of 70 seconds.

Earlier in August 2019, the platform had raised an undisclosed amount of pre-Series A investment through angel investment platform ah! Ventures.

Tangi App

In January 2020, Google had launched a short video form app Tangi — a TikTok like app for learning new skills.

"The name of the app is inspired by the words TeAch aNd GIve and "tangible" — things you can make," Google announced on its official blog.

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The social video sharing app is aimed at helping people learn new things every day, and connecting them with vibrant communities centred around their hobbies and passions. Loosely put, it marries TikTok's short-video format with Instagram's community features.

Videos on the app are vertically-oriented as on TikTok, Instagram Stories, and IGTV.

Coco Mao, Team Lead at Tangi, said, "Tangi has 60-second videos to help you try something new, and a place to share it back too. You can also share a re-creation of things you tried out with Tangi's 'Try It' feature, which helps build a community between creators and their fans."

Dubsmash

Dubmash is one of the oldest music video apps which was launched much before TikTok. It is available for both Android and iOS-based devices.

This app is free of cost, and allows users to lip-sync famous and popular dialogues from various films and television shows. One can customise the video clip by adding music, quotes, and sounds.