One of China’s top technology firms is killing off a short-video app that briefly made it big in the United States last year before becoming embroiled in a series of bitter controversies.
Kuaishou Technology, whose eponymous app is a major rival to ByteDance Inc.’s Chinese version of TikTok, said Wednesday that it will stop services for another of its offerings, Zynn.
The platform shot to the summit of download charts in the United States soon after it launched in May 2020, partly thanks to its system of paying users who signed up or referred friends.
But it rapidly fell from grace amid accusations of predatory pricing, plagiarizing TikTok’s layout and pilfering content from users on other social media platforms.
In June, Republican Senator Josh Hawley called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate Zynn, likening its model to a “traditional pyramid scheme.”
The same month, tech publication Wired reported that some online influencers had found that their videos had been uploaded to the app from other platforms without their consent.
Google Play Store made Zynn unavailable for download within a month of its debut, a move that a spokesman for the app later claimed was an “isolated incident,” AFP reported at the time. Continue to read the full article here
