The top three most popular apps on Apple’s App Store this morning are alternative social media platforms not included on the eSafety commissioner’s age-restricted platforms list.
Top apps on Apple’s App Store this morning are alternative social media apps not included on the eSafety Commissioner’s age-restricted platforms list, including Lemon8, Yope, and Coverstar.
Lemon8 is the number one free app, meaning it is the most-downloaded free app in the country right now. Created by Chinese tech giant ByteDance – which owns TikTok – the app is billed as “Instagram meets Pinterest” in how users can share photos and videos like Instagram, and save them to collections, similar to Pinterest boards. (Instagram is an age-restricted platform, Pinterest, however, is not included in the ban at this stage.)
Yope, which is a private, friends-only photo sharing app similar to Snapchat (banned) and WhatsApp (not banned), is second on Apple’s top app charts this morning, and Coverstar, which bills itself as “the safest TikTok alternative for kids nine to 16” is third.
Communications Minister Anika Wells addressed this last week, noting that she and the eSafety commissioner are looking at “migratory patterns”.
“If we find that because they’ve been logged out of Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok [or] what have you, they end up on Lemon8, then we will look at whether the harm has transferred there and whether we need to add them to the list,” Wells said.
“Should any particular platform like Lemon8 … become the new source, I will not hesitate to act.”
