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Senator Hawley Calls For Probe Into New TikTok Rival

By  |  June 10, 2020

Zynn, a rising TikTok-like service that pays its users, is drawing the attention of China hawk and Big Tech antagonist Sen. Josh Hawley (Republican – Missouri), who wants the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look into it, reported Axios. 

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    Zynn’s layout is nearly identical to that of TikTok, an app from rival Beijing-based company ByteDance that has well over 100 million downloads in the United States. Zynn is created by Kuaishou, another Chinese company.

    Kuaishou runs the second biggest video app in China, only trailing Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Unlike TikTok, however, Zynn claims to pay users both to watch videos and get their friends to sign up.

    Hawley wrote in his letter to the FTC that Zynn’s payment system “smacks of a textbook predatory-pricing scheme.”

    “The most substantial payments come from referrals: just like a traditional pyramid scheme, users receive exponentially larger payouts once they successfully convince others to install Zynn on their own devices,” he wrote. “The more devices on which Zynn is installed, the more money early adopters can make.”

    The Republican senator also raised concerns about the company’s ties to China.

    Full Content: Axios

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