Creators Struggle With Growing Momentum of Proposed TikTok Ban
As TikTok users and their audiences voice their concerns, the potential ban on the popular app is rapidly gaining traction – a development that has left many creators feeling both frustrated and energized.
The bill that would ban the app moved one step closer to becoming a law on Wednesday when it was fast-tracked through the House of Representatives and sent to the Senate, just a week after it was introduced.
V Spehar, the creator of popular TikTok account UnderTheDeskNews, has been a vocal opponent of efforts to ban the app. Last year, Spehar even went to Capitol Hill to advocate on behalf of TikTok when CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress.
“People are energized to fight this, and are smart, and don’t appreciate being belittled,” Spehar told TechCrunch. “It’s really sad to know that half of America is being told to shut up by our elected officials.”
If the bill becomes law, it would require TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app. However, China has previously stated its opposition to a sale, citing government export rules that changed in 2020. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok, the app would become illegal to distribute through app stores, potentially affecting over 170 million American users.
To defend its platform, TikTok has urged its users to call their Congresspeople and express their opposition to the legislation. This call to action has resulted in some lawmakers’ offices being flooded with angry calls from concerned TikTok users, which was mocked by late night host Stephen Colbert.
“This time around, the legislative process is moving much faster,” Jules Terpak, a popular tech commentator on TikTok, told TechCrunch. “Aside from TikTok sending out serious notifications about what’s going on, the cultural significance just feels more prominent – likely because Biden has stated he will sign it into law and people have become so comfortable with using TikTok in their daily lives.”
For those who rely on TikTok as a source of income, the potential ban is no laughing matter. The speed at which Congress is moving to limit TikTok’s reach has caught some creators off guard.
“This time around, the legislative process is moving much faster,” Jules Terpak, a popular tech commentator on TikTok, told TechCrunch. “Aside from TikTok sending out serious notifications about what’s going on, the cultural significance just feels more prominent – likely because Biden has stated he will sign it into law and people have become so comfortable with using TikTok in their daily lives.”
Since the bill passed in the House, TikTokers have been rallying their followers to take the bill more seriously. Popular creator Noah Glenn Carter, who has 8.7 million followers, posted a video urging his audience to call their Senators. Another creator, @cancelthisclothingco, posted a seven-minute video to their 1.4 million followers using hashtags like #tiananmensquare and #uyghur to “speedrun everything bad about China that China doesn’t want anyone to know.”
“I have a huge following, I can just make a video that tests exactly what they’re trying to say we can’t see,” @cancelthisclothingco said. The video has already received over 21,000 likes in just three hours.
TikTok’s CEO has emphasized that the company is not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that users are free to post content critical of China without interference. However, lawmakers such as Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) have repeatedly attempted to establish a connection between TikTok and the CCP in Congress. During a hearing, Cotton grilled Chew on his birthplace, political party, and citizenship, to which Chew responded, “I’m Singaporean,” multiple times.
While there is no evidence of the CCP spying on TikTok, there have been reports of ByteDance accessing TikTok user data without authorization. This has led to concerns that the Chinese government might use ByteDance to spy on Americans.
Sarah Phillips, a content creator and digital rights organizer at Fight for the Future, argues that if data privacy is the real issue, then Congress should target data brokers rather than TikTok.
“It’s xenophobic showboating,” said Phillips. “All discussions about banning TikTok come down to that because those of us who understand data collection practices know that our data is for sale from a variety of other tech companies due to the lack of digital privacy legislation.”
Representative David Schweikert (R-AZ) raised this point while debating the bill on the House floor on Wednesday, before it passed with a vote of 352-65.
“The problem with our approach here is that it appears to be well-meaning, but it does not address the underlying issue,” he said. “What stops them from taking the data, selling it to a data broker, and having it end up in the hands of bad actors?”
The U.S. government has been trying to force ByteDance to sell TikTok since 2020, when former President Donald Trump first called for a ban unless the app found a new owner. However, Trump now opposes the ban, claiming it would make Meta (formerly known as Facebook) more powerful.
Despite the flurry of support for the new bill and the speed at which it moved through the House, TikTok’s future is suddenly much less certain.
My understanding of the push to ban TikTok pic.twitter.com/KMXtWuFbS5
Phillips has been frustrated by condescending attitudes towards TikTokers. She pointed to posts on X that ridicule users for using euphemisms like “seggs” and “unalive” to get around content filters.
“I think a lot of people, if I asked them, ‘Should the government have control over what technology you can use?’, would likely not agree with that,” Phillips said. “Yet, they are jumping on this bandwagon against TikTok because they find the content to be cringe.”
The idea of banning TikTok has become a meme on platforms like X. Many TikTokers cannot comprehend why Congress would move so quickly and efficiently to create new legislation specifically targeting TikTok.
“The most bipartisan thing happening in Congress right now is consistently funding the military and censoring an app that they use to connect with other people,” Phillips told TechCrunch. “I mean, the President is on TikTok.”
Phillips believes that lawmakers’ failure to take TikTok users’ concerns seriously could have far-reaching consequences during the upcoming election cycle.
“There are many things that Congress could be focusing on at the moment, but it seems like this is largely political theater,” Phillips said. “I don’t see how this won’t affect the election.”
While Terpak has a following of over 330,000 on TikTok, she takes a more neutral stance on the app’s possible ban.
“Many people on TikTok are arguing that the government has more pressing matters to address, but I think that is a flawed perspective considering the immense power of technology and social media in our daily lives, a trend that will only continue in the future,” Terpak said. “I think many people struggle with being able to appreciate and criticize a platform at the same time.”
