On Wednesday, the House voted to “ban TikTok unless the app is divested from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance,” the Daily Dot reported. President Joe Biden has said he’ll support the legislation if it gets to him. It’s unclear what the Senate will do next, but the ball is in its court.
Meanwhile, creators who make money on TikTok are concerned yet hopeful.
Former creators Jupiter Stone and Lee Tilghman expressed their feelings toward the news and their thoughts about the future of the creator economy this week at SXSW.
Tilghman was a wellness influencer before returning back to a standard 9-5 career recently. She says, “I would be excited if TikTok was banned.”
Tilghman believes the hardest part about being a content creator is being able to “turn it off mentally.”
Since using her wellness account to speak on topics in mental health, Tilghman now says, “We don’t need to go on TikTok for mental health, we actually need each other.”
ZDNet held a study that showed of the 37% of content creators who earn a full-time income, “75% have experienced burnout,” due to the mental strain it can hold.
Another reason Tilghman thinks the ban of TikTok would be a positive change? The benefits she feels the TikTok Creator Fund tends to take away from the creators.
Tilghman feels that TikTok is “never gonna tell us how these algorithms work,” and tries to keep you from going viral consistently. If every video of yours goes viral, you wouldn’t feel the need to post as consistently, she argues. She says, “It’s eyes and ad dollars for them.”
“We will be chasing that because we’re human,” she adds. “As long as these tech companies are for profit and ad dollars they want you to be on it at must as possible… that comes with chasing content and doom scrolling.”
Jupiter Stone agrees with Tilghman on this subject and expresses concerns about TikTok controlling what creators can post.
“In the same way you need diverse humans making movies… You need influencers making decisions on platforms,” Stone says.
When asked about alternatives to building a business without TikTok, Stone emphasized what they call a “digital ecosystem.” They say your social media is a platform that should be “one layer then it expands outwards.”
If TikTok does get banned, they admit, “Where are all your people gonna go? That’s a scary thought,” so it’s important to utilize other medias now.
If a creator doesn’t want to be apart of the TikTok Creator Fund, Stone suggests they pay more attention to email lists and consistently getting your name on other platforms. They also add that the Patreon feed “doesn’t get suppressed by the algorithm.”
