What TikTok Creators stand to lose if an app is banned

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ohn Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed a bill that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app to a buyer in the United States within nine months or face a national ban. The ban, passed by the House of Representatives on March 13 and the Senate on Wednesday, was folded into a bill that would provide billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

“The path to my desk was a difficult one. It should be easier, and it should be there sooner,” Biden said after signing the bill. “But in the end, we did what America always does; we rose to the moment.”

In response, ByteDance uploaded a message to Toutiao, a Chinese social media platform, saying that the company has “no plans to sell,” and TikTok released a statement on X. “Banning TikTok is an unconstitutional law this, and we will challenge it in court,” the statement reads. “We believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side, and we will ultimately prevail.” The statement noted that the ban would “destroy seven million businesses and silence 170 million Americans.”

Since TikTok became popular in the US in 2020, it has become a platform where creators of all kinds can quickly build a following and grow businesses through the app’s revenue sharing programs, monetization of live streams, and markets. take brand, paid. partnerships, and initiatives. Beyond creating space for non-traditional livelihoods—by 2023 Consultation in the morning report, 57% of Gen Z would be content creators if given the chance – TikTok is and always will be a place where people can build community. If the app is banned in the US, TikTok’s creators say they are worried about more than losing a revenue stream. The app has become a vital resource for people to come together to share information, educate others on a wide range of topics, develop their business and brand identity, and gather and organize like-minded people around issues. various humanitarian.

Although TikTok’s path is still unclear, the creators of the app are laughing their way through a possible ban or trying not to worry too much about something out of their control. TIME spoke with a few TikTokers, who have used their platforms in a variety of ways, to discuss what they worry about losing and how they plan to move forward.

Small businesses will feel the effects of the TikTok ban

TikTok is integral to the reach of many small businesses in the U.S. According to a March 2024 Oxford Economics report, which surveyed 1,050 small business owners and 7,500 TikTok users to find out how they “interact with the app and leverage the economic and social opportunities. Over seven million businesses use TikTok to promote their products. More than half of the respondents to the study said that TikTok helped them reach new audiences that they would not have been able to tap into otherwise, and 45% of those surveyed said it was “a significant part of their success and/or growth their business. directly attributable to their TikTok marketing efforts.”

Nadya Okamoto, creator of TikTok with over four million followers and co-founder of lifestyle period care brand August, says that TikTok has been able to help her business “unlock so much growth.” This is because ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook are oversaturated and expensive to place, but TikTok allowed her company to promote its products organically. “Platforms like TikTok that are heavily focused on organic brand awareness allow for overnight virality and allow anyone to build a following to help small businesses,” she says. “TikTok is really important for community building. I’ve found so much community with people like other Asian creators, other queer creators, other female founders, and I think it’s because people are able to do a little bit more about storytelling through short video.”

TikTok is a central space for organizing marginalized communities

TikTok has over 170 million users in the US, and the platform allows for rapid community building. “With TikTok, you can start something almost immediately and get support. I think that scares a lot of our political class because we’re using it to advocate for ourselves against them,” says Imani Barbarin, a disability rights activist with over 696,000 followers on TikTok. “Without TikTok, that community building, that advocacy work would be lost.”

TikTok’s ability to make even the most innocuous videos go viral has made the app a place where different perspectives and worlds can be shared, allowing users to interact with people they might not have met otherwise. For Barbarin and her community of young activists, TikTok offers an online space in a physical world where it feels like “everyone has forgotten about us”. Younger disability advocates are on the scene growing up and sharing their experiences in real time.

“We’re learning more about each other and how to navigate systems that are built without us in mind or, at the very least, to isolate us from society,” says Barbarin. “The truth is, the more we see each other, the more we connect with each other, the more we start working together to create a future where we can all live sustainably. That scares a lot of people in power because they cash in on our desperation and our disconnection from each other.”

TikTok also provides several ways to raise and earn money. In November 2023, 28-year-old AR creator Jourdan Johnson raised $14,000 in 10 days with his viral “Filter For Good,” an effect that had creators trace a watermelon across a squiggly line, collecting seeds.

The filter generated money through qualified views through TikTok’s Effect Creator Rewards program. It could only be used once a day, and it started generating money after being used more than 200,000 times. The effect gained popularity almost immediately, and Johnson quickly reached the maximum amount of money that the filter could generate through the program in less than two weeks. Johnson, who donated to Doctors Without Borders and bought eSIMs to help the people of Gaza, says it was a small way to use his skills to help. “We saw how people can organize around different causes and issues that they are passionate about and believe in,” she says. “So it turns out that the issue is now about the actual platform we’re on.”

Grassroots organizers have succeeded on TikTok, too, creating a new generation of activists. Gen Z for Change, which has been on the app since October 2020, organizes young voters and focuses on issues ranging from climate justice, gun safety, worker and economic rights, and the rights of marginalized communities. The group’s TikTok following has grown to over 1.8 million since launching in 2020, as they continue to educate their followers on political issues relevant to Gen Z.

“The Gen Z for Change audience has evolved with the page itself,” says Anthony Guevara, Por El Cambio’s head of engagement and Gen-Z Coordinator. The second is an initiative aimed at Latino Gen Z and offers resources such as combating misinformation and educating young Latinos on things like early voting and higher education. “People who have been following the page since 2020 have seen the progress the page has made and still has to make.”

He says this kind of growth wouldn’t really happen on a platform like X or Instagram because multiple polls have shown that Gen Z uses TikTok as their main source of news.

However, the Gen Z for Change team still relies on other social platforms like Instagram to get the word out about various initiatives. The coalition recently launched a tool that sends daily emails to representatives using Apple Shortcuts, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. After downloading the tool on Shortcuts, users are prompted to enter their congressional district, and it automatically sends daily emails to representatives who have not signed the cease-fire resolution in the House of Representatives. The tool has been used about 10 million times – meaning between 25 and 30 million emails have been sent to representatives, according to Sofia Ongele, director of strategy for Gen Z for Change.

But without TikTok, they will lose a digital space for the community and to connect with like-minded people around the globe. The United States is giving ByteDance at least nine months to sell to a buyer inside the state, if not, the app will be banned. It is not clear how that will happen, but a complete ban on TikTok is difficult, and the US government faces many challenges to enforce it. There will be legal battles, issues with antitrust enforcement, and public discord. If the ban happens, the app won’t disappear from people’s phones – it will disappear from the app store. This means that the platform would not be able to update the app, nor would they be able to keep it up to date, and slowly it would become unusable. Lawmakers on both sides cited national security concerns as the main reason to support the ban.

But, Ongele says this ban feels like “a functional bandage on a bigger issue, which is the lack of regulation on social media.” She continues, “I don’t think it’s even remotely arguable that banning an app that has been used by many people to raise money for each other, bring awareness to various issues, and hold people accountable after police brutality. being sent to look after the greater needs of the people.”

Write to Moises Mendez II at moises.mendez@time.com.