Congress Passed a Potential TikTok Ban, Influencers Are Worried About Their Careers

As the potential TikTok ban in the U.S. could become a reality, TikTokers express growing worry over the “devastating” impact on their careers, with fears that the businesses they’ve built from the app would “shrivel and die,” as a result.

On Saturday, the U.S. House of Representatives took action by approving a new bill forcing the Chinese-owned ByteDance to sell its U.S. TikTok assets within 270 days or face the ban across the nation. The bill was included “as part of a wide-ranging foreign aid package meant to support Israel and Ukraine,” according to CNN, with the expectation that including the bill with the foreign aid would expedite its progress and increase the likelihood of its passage.

On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill as well, and it now moves to President Joe Biden’s desk. Biden said he intended to sign the previous bill into law, which was stalled in the Senate after being passed by the House, so it is expected he will sign this new bill. If it passes, it sets the stage for a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. by 2025, although the process may extend beyond that timeline.

Despite the fact that this won’t happen overnight, creators are not pleased and view the move as hypocritical and a violation of their freedom of speech.

On the flip side, those who are in favor of this ban argue that TikTok might be forced to hand over user data to the Chinese government. They also express concerns about TikTok potentially manipulating or prioritizing certain topics under governmental influence. TikTok has consistently denied these claims and has taken steps to set itself apart from Byte dance.

Both TikTok and its users have taken up a fighting stance against Congress, with the platform encouraging users to contact their representatives and voice their opinions. Creators have energetically rallied against the bill, emphasizing what they perceive as the U.S. government’s hypocrisy. They argue that the focus is disproportionately on one app while other tech giants like Meta and Google remain untouched.

A creator on TikTok with 9 million followers, Leo LonDini, queried how other companies with partial Chinese ownership get to go ahead with business as usual.

A large amount of Apple products are made in China, and other examples of Chinese connections include Tencent, a Chinese company that has a share in Epic Games, Spotify, Warner Music Group, Universal Group, Snapchat, Tesla, and others.

LonDini said, “Listen, I don’t want any government, foreign or domestic, spying on me. And if our government could actually prove that Chinese companies are spying on us, well, then we have a decision to make, don’t we? Either we accept the risk, or we get rid of the app.”