What is the difference between TikTok and Douyin, the version of the app used in China
It's the summer of 2016 in the northern hemisphere, and a revolution is brewing at ByteDance's China offices.
A group of developers, led by entrepreneur Zhang Yiming, is finalizing an application with which they hope to conquer the fledgling market for short video platforms.
The long-awaited release takes place in September.
They decide to call the app Douyin, and in less than a year, it reaches over 100 million users.
TikTok alone has been downloaded more than 3.5 billion times, driven by a clever algorithm that irretrievably locks us to the screen, generating worries.
The tool collects a lot of information: your age, location, device, and even your typing pace.
It is not surprising that it has raised suspicions on the part of several governments, especially due to the company's alleged links with the Chinese Communist Party and the allegations that it uses TikTok for espionage and "brainwashing".
These concerns are compounded by what is happening with the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, an app that is heavily censored and, according to various reports, designed to encourage the viralization of educational and non-confrontational material.
But what else do we know about the Douyin? And how does it differ from TikTok?
How Douyin came to be
Douyin dominates the short video app market in China.
"At the end of 2022, it had 730 million users," says Zizheng Yu, professor of advertising and marketing at the University of Greenwich in the UK.
As Yu explains in an article published on academic news site The Conversation, Douyin and TikTok are essentially the same app, both allowing their users to create, share and watch short videos.
The logo for both tools is the same, and they share the same parent company, ByteDance.
Douyin and TikTok were developed during Zhang Yiming's tenure as CEO of ByteDance, one of the most powerful app developers in the world
When it launched in 2016, Douyin quickly rose to prominence with fresh and humorous content.
Simple pranks like lip syncing — also known as lip syncing — while the music of the moment played spread quickly.
Then came the viral challenges, and there was a meteoric rise in the app's popularity.
"In the beginning, it was for young people to share and watch short music videos. Now it has expanded, and various styles have emerged, such as medium and long-length videos," explains Nara Bi, from Nanjing Marketing Group in China, to BBC News Mundo, BBC Spanish service.
"The platform offers a wide variety of categories, including entertainment, news, commentary, food, pets, health and educational content," he adds.
Content that, in turn, has also become popular on TikTok in recent years.
In the style of the most popular Chinese apps with many features, such as WeChat, Douyin allows food delivery and local restaurant recommendations, for example - a range of possibilities that TikTok does not currently offer.
'Two twins separated at birth'
In his book TikTok Boom , British journalist Chris Stokel-Walker cites a group of academics to define the relationship between TikTok and its Chinese version, Douyin.
"They are like two twin platforms separated at birth, developed under one roof but implemented in two very different contexts."
Nara Bi cites some of the particularities that led to the launch of TikTok for international markets.
"Each country has different policies and regulations, especially China, with unique regulatory mechanisms. There are also some restrictions for Chinese users when accessing foreign websites," she tells the BBC.
Live streaming has been available on Douyin since the app's launch, something TikTok would only implement years later.
"So Douyin is exclusive to China, while TikTok is for foreign countries," adds the marketing expert.
TikTok was launched shortly after Douyin in 2017, first becoming popular in other Asian markets such as Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and India.
Tenba Group, an agency specializing in Chinese digital marketing, explains that "by having two separate platforms, ByteDance can allow more user-generated content on TikTok and comply with the restrictions required on Douyin".
How is Douyin different from TikTok?
Navigating both apps is virtually the same experience: identical layouts and simple menus make it easy to create, play, and find videos.
But there are several differences.
The first is that they are different applications. In other words, opening a TikTok account is not the same as opening a Douyin account.
When they launched, live streaming was more established in China than in the West. Therefore, from the beginning, Douyin encouraged lives among its users. TikTok would only make this function available with the arrival of the lockdowns imposed by the covida-19 pandemic.
Likewise, donations to creators on Douyin have traditionally been more common than on TikTok.
Another key difference is where the data is stored. With TikTok or any other social network, most of us accept its use through an undisclosed deal: we offer personal information in exchange for entertainment.
The possibility that TikTok owners share the data collected with the Chinese government is one of the main concerns that the application generates among users and governments, especially in the West.
One of the peculiarities of Douyin compared to TikTok is its multifunctionality, including the possibility of making purchases directly in the application
But this relationship between TikTok and China has not been proven. Supposedly, TikTok data is stored outside of the Asian giant.
In the United States, for example, the information is in a database in the state of Virginia with backup in Singapore.
Douyin, on the other hand, stores its data in China.
"Likewise, Douyin adheres to Chinese data protection laws, while TikTok complies with regulations in other countries," explains Bi.
Tenba Group also highlights the age difference of users.
"Douyin (users) are still young, but a little older than TikTok. That's why Douyin offers more lifestyle content, business tips, and even videos from local authorities."
TikTok hashtags and trends also vary by location and cultural differences.
Returning to the multifunctionality of Douyin, digital marketing agencies highlight everything that can be done in the app, in addition to publishing and interacting with videos like on TikTok.
For example, since 2021, Tenba Group says users can buy products directly from native stores or even live streams.
"E-commerce is becoming more and more popular within Douyin, you can even book hotels and take restaurant tours," he says.
Censorship and age control
Tenba Group highlights the greater presence of educational and business-oriented videos on Douyin, while noting that TikTok is more focused on music and dance, "probably due to the slightly younger audience".
In this sense, Douyin also seems to be affected by the strong censorship that exists in all social networks in China, with an army of police on the internet that delete content critical of the government or that may incite political instability.
In 2019, as TikTok began its great international rise, user Feroza Aziz's account was suspended after she spoke out about Beijing's treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang Province.
In 2019, content creator Feroza Aziz was censored on TikTok after posting a video about the plight of Uighur Muslims in China
The decision drew heavy criticism, and TikTok apologized and reinstated the account.
Since then, there doesn't seem to have been many other instances of censorship, aside from certain controversial content moderation decisions common across all platforms.
Citizen Lab researchers performed a comparison between TikTok and Douyin and concluded that TikTok does not apply the same political censorship as its Chinese counterpart.
However, users have reported a phenomenon known as " shadow banning ", a kind of covert censorship that causes some content to have less impact and be less promoted by the platform.
Two apps in sight
Both platforms face criticism from users, institutions and media.
"Douyin has been criticized for vulgar material, while TikTok has been criticized for privacy concerns, alleged censorship and the spread of misinformation," Bi tells the BBC.
The expert notes that Douyin has been criticized in China for hurting young people with an algorithm that continually presents content that interests them, rather than content that is good for them.
“This can leave users trapped in a camera, exposed to a limited range of ideas and perspectives. They can become more susceptible to the influence of the content they see and lose the ability to think critically”, evaluates Bi.
TikTok and Douyin have been criticized for, among other issues, alleged content censorship.
These criticisms prompted Douyin to enable a section under the "Discover" tab that we don't see on TikTok either.
It's called zheng nengliang , which translates to "positive energy," and it features videos promoting the Chinese Communist Party and its social ideals, as Stokel-Walker writes in her book on TikTok.
"Academics and analysts called this a 'survival tactic', appeasing politicians who might close the deal on a whim (...) This showed how, despite the same engine that runs the two applications, there were fundamental differences between them in terms of environments very different operations," wrote Stokel-Walker.
Concerns about the level of dependence that the platform can generate in minors have also been the subject of frequent criticism.
In 2019, Douyin limited use of "teen mode" to 40 minutes a day — and only accessible between 6 am and 10 pm. Then, in 2021, this teen mode became mandatory for users under 14 years old.
These kinds of measures took a little longer to come to TikTok. It wasn't until the beginning of March of this year that the platform announced that it would implement a default limit of 60 minutes per day for users under 18 years old .
Additionally, those under 13 would need a code entered by their parents to use the app for an additional 30 minutes.
It is not completely clear, however, how feasible it is to meet these limitations.
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