WITH THE prospect of a ban hanging over TikTok, its 170m American users may start looking for an alternative time-sink. They could plump for Bigo Live, popular for TikTokish live-streaming. Or Likee, which offers similar video-editing and sharing options and has more than 100m users around the world. There is also Hago, which blends social media and video games, and which has clocked up some 500m downloads.

The three apps are similar to TikTok in another way, too. The firm that makes them, Joyy, is based in Singapore, just like TikTok. And like ByteDance, TikTok’s parent firm, Joyy’s controlling shareholder, called Huanju, is based in mainland China.