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Douyin cracks down on fake foreign accounts amid wave of ‘TikTok refugees’

Douyin, the ByteDance-owned sibling of TikTok that is only available in mainland China, has said it is stepping up efforts to crack down on accounts impersonating overseas users amid a wave of “TikTok refugees” ahead of that app’s pending ban in the US.

In a post on local microblogging platform Weibo on Thursday, Li Liang, a vice-president of Douyin Group, cautioned that having an overseas IP address does not necessarily indicate a genuine foreign registration.

“Recently, some people have been trying to exploit the situation – reposting videos and pretending to be foreign users, especially certain grey-market groups hoping to gain followers,” he wrote. “These accounts are tricky to identify. Over the past few days, we’ve taken action against more than 10,000 accounts impersonating foreign users,” the post said.

Li’s comments followed rumours that Douyin had opened up registration to international users. Posts with the hashtag #tiktokrefugee had garnered 210 million views as of Thursday.

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