There has been a rumor being spread that TikTok is actually being shut down because of the negativity surrounding the application. The rumor began with a fake screenshot of a tweet by the official TikTok US twitter account, claiming, “TikTok will be shutting down on December 21,”

TikTok’s Response to the Rumor

Although screenshots of the tweet have been circumventing the social media, the actual tweet has not been found on their account. Nevertheless, the official TikTok US account has soon dubbed the tweet to be “#FakeNews.”

Was the Rumor just a Setup?

The timing of the rumor is a bit suspicious because only recently Bloomberg has announced that ByteDance, the company that created TikTok, has become the most valuable startup in the world. Surpassing Uber that is priced at $72 Billion. ByteDance has also recently signed a contract with the Japanese company Softbank, which stands out because of their investments into other companies.

A lot of trouble has come TikTok’s way, especially once ByteDance has purchased musical.ly, to merge it together with TikTok. The musical.ly fans have caused an uproar, and TikTok has received a lot of backlash as an outcome.

Facebook as well, has decided to create a similar video app, called Lasso. At the moment, it is unknown when Facebook will release Lasso. However, everyone knew that they aimed their audience to be the same as the one of musical.ly. It would be a lot easier for them to become popular.

TikTok has gained over 80 million US downloads on the AppStore, since its launch back in September of 2016. TikTok cases to have more than 500 million active month to month clients, 150 million of which are situated in China. It even turned into the world’s most downloaded iOS application in the first quarter of 2018.

Since a lot of musical.ly users are unhappy about the fact that musical.ly has merged with TikTok, it may be Facebook’s chance to win over musical.ly’s previous audience and make it their own. Facebook is known for copying popular features from other applications and making it their own. So, we simply have to wait whether Lasso will have such an impact on their targeted audience.

For loyal TikTok users, however, many of them are struggling to become famous, this may result in their decrease of interest towards the app. However, anyone can get unlimited fans and likes on freetiktok.com and revive their passion for this app.