With the election year upon us, a TikTok ban is looming (again), leading all members of the creator economy—content creators themselves to the people who run social media platforms—to wonder what comes next for the industry if the short-form video platform were to disappear from the U.S. market.
President Joe Biden said on Friday (Mar. 8) that, if a bill to ban TikTok in the U.S. comes to his desk, he would sign it. The president recently joined the app himself (in February) as part of his re-election campaign strategy to reach young voters. This is not the first time the U.S. government has entertained a ban of the app, and industry experts want creators to be ready for any outcome.
Jason Newman, founder of the talent agency Untitled Entertainment, has a piece of advice for creators: “Be prepared to move your content and what you create and what you do to another platform.”
At a SXSW panel yesterday (March 9), Newman was joined by Remi Bader, a fashion influencer with 2.3 million followers on TikTok, Megan Bycel, Meta’s director of entertainment partnerships, and Brent Weinstein, chief development officer at Candle Media, in a discussion about the future of the creator economy.
Bader started her creator career on TikTok in 2020, ironically at a time when former president Donald Trump was threatening to ban the app through an executive order. Bader said in a way the regulatory threat prompted her to sign up on TikTok in case she wouldn’t be able to access the app one day. She thinks many content creators are unmoved by another potential TikTok ban and successful creators are already on multiple platforms.
“I think a lot of creators are probably ignoring that right now because we’ve heard it so many times and it is possible that it can happen,” Bader said. “Build your brand out, think about every platform. Once I got bigger on TikTok, I right away was like, okay, it’s time to start on Instagram. What can I do next?”
Meta’s Bycel She said her team wants to help creators develop strategies across social platforms beyond Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Threads. “If TikTok goes away and they most likely there’ll be another platform that’s going to pop up,” Bycel said. “And our hope is obviously that Instagram and some of our other platforms are going to help fill that void.”