A tale of two apps. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Lily Dromale. The Chinese company Bight Dance owns two versions of basically the same app.

In the US we have Tik-Toc used by an estimated 170 million people.

Meanwhile, Gaoin in China itself has 700 million daily active users, each has different users in different countries,

and some argue different kinds of content, despite having the same parent company

Tik-Tok and Doin function as separate worlds.

Now, as Tik-Tok simmers in political hot water, once again, the differences between

the two apps are under the microscope.

So I ask Marketplace's China correspondent Jennifer Pack, why

Bightance has this set up in the first place?

Well, essentially the Chinese government wants to have control over all of the content that's going within the country.

So China doesn't want the outside world's content to come in to a platform that it cannot

control. Bike Dance, which is the parent company for Tik Talk and Doying,

decided that rather than trying to have a version that appeals to China and the rest of the world to have two separate products entirely.

So one, Doying, abides by Chinese censorship and content regulation rules and then one for the rest of the world.

Well, what is Doine like? How would you describe it to someone who's never seen it or heard it?

I think it essentially operates the same as all short video apps so it's you know a few

second long videos that comes with some music sometimes it's created entirely by people

for other people. I mean you mentioned the numbers for Tik-talk but

towing has 743 million active users as of September 2023.

Wow.

So yeah, so it's it's a wide-ranging population.

There's tons of content on there.

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