Nobody saw it coming. This Thursday, TikTok Lite, the new application from Chinese ByteDance, arrived in France without making any noise. Its goal ? “Providing users with the best possible video viewing experience using less data, promoting personal expression and interaction with the creator community,” boasts the platform available on IoS and Android. Lighter and interactive, perhaps, but above all more profitable.
Indeed, the new application offers the user the opportunity to earn rewards while watching videos. 300 virtual coins upon registration, then up to 600 coins for each daily connection and 150 coins for every three likes. The time spent is also important: the longer you stay connected to the application, the more coins you earn. 150 coins for one minute spent on the application, 750 for 5 and 4,200 for 25. All this small fortune can subsequently be changed into Amazon vouchers or PayPal gift cards. If, for the moment, this functionality is only available on Android, it seems to go against current European logic.
Remuneration already present
“In this application, there is a light side and a dark side of force,” summarizes the doctor in economics and teacher-researcher at INSEEC, Julien Pillot. Its advantage is significant: offering an application that consumes less energy is a good thing. “But the application also encourages us to see more videos,” adds the specialist. For Julien Pillot, if the environmental impact per image is lower, the overall cost of viewing risks being much higher.
Above all, the new TikTok raises questions about the risks of addiction that have already been pointed out, particularly in France. In the conclusions of the commission of inquiry “The TikTok tactic: opacity, addiction and shadow puppets”, delivered last summer, the Senate warned about the average time spent on the application for 4-18 year olds which was 1h47 per individual. In the same report, psychologists highlighted a risk of “stupefication”, in addition to that of addiction.
Won’t the phenomenon be more serious with this reward system? Yes, says Julien Pillot who sees it as a form of incentive for young individuals to spend more time there. But he qualifies: “TikTok already had this reward feature and allowed sponsorship of content creators from the start.”
TikTok tries to catch up
As for the timing, one might think that the TikTok application is making fun of the European rules that became stricter in the summer with the implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA) to fight against illicit content that is too omnipresent on the Internet. For Julien Pillot, addiction problems are not in themselves included in the new laws which in no way oblige TikTok to reduce screen time. The DSA further prohibits lack of transparency in advertising or content calling for racial hatred.
Above all, TikTok knows that it still has some catching up to do on its competitor Meta. In France, the number of monthly active users of Instagram was 26 million in 2023, compared to 14.9 million for TikTok, according to the Digimind website. “TikTok remains a minority in the West compared to Instagram and is therefore seeking to be extremely aggressive to take market share,” concludes the digital economy specialist.