New Study Reveals Most Popular Banned Apps Worldwide

New Study Reveals Most Popular Banned Apps Worldwide

Dil Bar Irshad | September 3, 2024 | 08:50 AM IST | Featured by VoM, Featured Edition, Technology | Follow on Google News

New Study Reveals Most Popular Banned Apps Worldwide

New Study Reveals Most Popular Banned Apps Worldwide

• New study shows that the most popular app that is banned in multiple countries is Facebook with 3.05B monthly users.
• Tiktok stands out as an app that may become banned in the US for 170M users in the country.
• PUBG Mobile closes the ranking as the only game on the list of the most popular banned apps.

Experts at Linkee.ai conducted a study to rank the most popular apps that are currently banned in other countries. The information about monthly world and US users and revenue was collected from Statista. Google searches in the US were added for additional context. The final ranking was made based on the number of monthly users.

Facebook is the most popular app that is banned in other countries with 3.05B monthly users all over the world. It is currently banned in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea among other countries but it still brought over $130B in revenue last year.

Whatsapp takes the second place in the ranking of the most popular banned apps, getting 3.03B monthly users, closely trailing Facebook. Popular messenger is similarly banned in China and North Korea, but it is also not allowed in Syria, Qatar and UAE. Whatsapp has less users in the US with 98M but it is more searched online than Facebook, gathering over 5M queries in a month.

Youtube is third with 2.7M monthly users all over the world. Youtube is the most searched app online to download with over 10M queries as well as second most used app in this ranking, losing only to Google. Currently Youtube is banned only in North Korea but it also faces partial bans and content restrictions in China, Thailand, Malaysia and even Germany.

Instagram takes the fourth place with 2B monthly users, a billion less than Whatsapp or Facebook. Instagram earned $60.3B dollars in revenue in 2023 and $45B dollars came from the users in the United States. While hugely popular in the US, the app is banned in Vietnam, North Korea, China and Turkey.

Google is fifth in the ranking of the most popular apps banned in other countries, having 1.5B monthly users. The popular search engine has the most users in the ranking, accounting for 276M monthly users. Google also has the biggest revenue with over $305B earned last year. Currently Google is banned only in China.

WeChat follows closely with the sixth place and 1.3B monthly users. Another popular messaging app in this list, WeChat is banned in India but also faces partial bans in Canada, UK and New Zealand where it is not allowed on government devices. WeChat has only 4M users in the US but still brings over $71M in revenue.

TikTok which can be soon banned in the US currently takes the seventh place in the ranking of the most popular banned apps. TikTok has 170M users in the United States alone and a total of one billion monthly users in the world. The app is banned in India and has partial bans in Nepal, New Zealand, Taiwan and Indonesia.

Spotify holds eighth place with 602M monthly users. Popular music service has 100M users in the United States and is the third most-sought online app with over 6M people searching for it monthly, being behind only Youtube and Instagram. Spotify is banned in quite a few countries, including China, Ethiopia, Myanmar and Venezuela.

Twitter (X) is ninth, gathering over 335M users in a month, three times less than Tiktok. The social media app is banned in China, Russia and Turkmenistan among other countries. Currently Twitter has 76M users in the US and has earned $1.75B in 2023, more than Spotify.

PUBG Mobile closes the ranking with the tenth place and 30M monthly users. The only game in this list, it earned $1.1B in revenue last year. Right now PUBG Mobile is banned in India and for a period of time was banned in Nepal, Pakistan and China.

Dil Bar Irshad

Dil Bar Irshad is a seasoned journalist, hails from Jammu Kashmir's Doda, covers political, social, business stories, index stories.