Elijah Cabatic, Staff Writer

With all of the controversy over its older brother Tik Tok, ByteDances other social media site, Lemon8 has often fallen below the headlines. Many flocked to it in light of the potential Tik Tok ban, but just like Tik Tok you can no longer download it from the app store, but can use it. So what is it?

In 2020 it was originally launched as Sharee in Japan and came to the United States in 2023. When it first landed in the States it gained popularity, in large part due to influencer marketing (a form of marketing involving endorsements from social media influencers). Though after a few months its popularity dropped off as the initial hype died down. In the weeks before the Tik Tok ban it shot up in popularity, but because it is owned by Byte Dance it was hit with the same restrictions as Tik Tok. While its servers are still up, you can’t download it from the Google or Apple App Stores as of the writing of this article. 

Its design was based off of another app which has experienced a bump in downloads recently, Xiaohongshu (REDnote) and has been described as a combination of Pinterest and Instagram. It is not and never was designed to compete directly with Tik Tok and are very different apps in structure and content. The content on Lemon8 is more in line with Pinterest, targeted mainly at young women with mainly lifestyle content  while Tik Tok had almost anything under the sun. Many creators made an attempt to move to the site for it to be banned as well due to their shared owner. 

The future of the app seems bleak as its fate is tied to that of Tik Tok’s, and despite President Trump’s attempts to get the app unbanned, the courts upheld the law and it is non downloadable from all major app stores. To learn more about the Tik Tok ban read our other article about it here.