Happy Thursday!
As criticism toward TikTok grows, there have been some alternatives tossed into the mix. But will they stick? If you are leaving TikTok, I’d love to hear why. Drop me a line at [email protected].
Also in this newsletter, Nicki Minaj’s MAGA turn, young hos discourse, a TikTok-famous Skid Row activist dies, and more.
In case you missed it, I want to re-up the resources I linked to in the last newsletter for those who’d like to help those in Minneapolis and immigrants targeted by ICE.
Send a letter to the House and Senate demanding Congress stop funding for ICE using this ACLU form.
Read testimonies and donate to one of the mutual aid funds, organizations, or crowdfunding campaigns listed on the Stand With Minnesota website.
Give money to the Immigration Law Center of Minnesota and/or the Immigrant Defense Project.
Share vetted ICE alerts with your communities. If you see ICE activity in your neighborhood, use the SALUTE method when relaying information, per the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.
Boycott ICE’s corporate partners, including FedEx, Comcast, UPS, and others which you can find in this piece from The Nation.
Know your rights and learn how to protect immigrant workers and community members using resources from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON).
TikTok’s new U.S. operations, which officially changed over last week, are off to a rocky start. As it rebounds from a power outage and accusations that it censored videos about ICE in Minneapolis, there’s been a lot of chatter about alternatives to the app. After Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda shared yesterday that her TikTok account was permanently banned, calls to switch platforms were intensified. (Owda’s TikTok account appeared to be restored as of Thursday afternoon).
UpScrolled, a progressive social app reminiscent of Instagram and X, just hit 1 million users and was the top free app in the App Store on Thursday morning. Skylight Social, a short-form video app built on the same AT Protocol as Bluesky, recently hit 380,000 users. Meanwhile, TikTok uninstalls rose 150% after the new ownership change.
Neither of these quite replicates the experience of being on TikTok, even with its current issues. The apps aren’t trying to mimic or replace TikTok per se, but they have both purported to put more control back in users’ hands. It’s yet to be seen what platform, if any, will replace TikTok. UpScrolled and Skylight show a lot of promise but are still very new. We’ve seen users flirt with alternatives in the past, such as when TikTok went down for a day last year and people started downloading RedNote. It didn’t really stick, further cementing TikTok as a dominant force in social media despite criticism. When the algorithm is officially retrained and the bugs are worked out, will people carry on business as usual?
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