Major TikTok creators are joining Triller, including Charli and Dixie D'Amelio.
Charli D'Amelio, who reigns TikTok as the most followed individual on the app, joined Triller on Tuesday and has already racked up more than 927,000 followers. Her first three videos all feature the song "Be Happy" by Dixie, which was a viral TikTok sound.
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Triller, a video sharing platform similar to TikTok, has been around since 2015. Triller's App Store downloads skyrocketed after India banned TikTok on Jun. 29 following ongoing border disputes with China.
The Trump administration has expressed concern over TikTok's security, since the app is owned and operated by the Chinese company ByteDance. Trump first floated banning the app in July as retaliation against China for their supposed involvement in spreading the coronavirus. Days later, Trump reneged, and claimed he would allow the app's continued availability in the United States as long as it's bought by a "very American" company and if the U.S. government could get an unprecedented cut of the deal.
Trump followed that with an executive order banning TikTok and WeChat, a messaging app owned by Chinese company Tencent, from American app stores if they weren't sold to American companies within 45 days. TikTok, in return, filed a lawsuit on Aug. 24 against the Trump administration "to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees."
Meanwhile, Microsoft and Oracle were both bidding to buy TikTok. Oracle won the bid, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. There's a catch, though — the deal will not be structured as a sale. Rather, Oracle will be TikTok's "trusted tech partner" in the U.S., and will take over TikTok's operations in the States. The deal is pending approval from the White House and the Committee on Foreign Investment.
Oracle has ties to the Trump Administration. Its executives are "political allies of the president," according to the New York Times.
Amid all of the uncertainty surrounding TikTok, its most popular creators are quietly migrating to Triller. The D'Amelio family — Charli, her sister Dixie, their mother Heidi, and their father Marc — made their debuts this week.
"We couldn't be more proud to welcome the D'Amelio family to the Triller family with open arms," Triller's executive chairman Bobby Sarnevesht said in a statement to Verge. "They are an incredibly multi-faceted and talented family who have already been invaluable to us."
Triller reports it has 65 million monthly users, and it saw a surge of downloads following Trump's threat to ban TikTok. It also threatened to sue reports questioning whether its self-reported numbers are inflated.
Topics TikTok
