TikTok creators mourn app where 'overnight' success is possible

For internet personality Erika Thompson, TikTok is the most powerful social media platform for educating her 11 million followers about her lifelong passion for bees. She believes that if the U.S. bans TikTok, it would not only cause "substantial" financial losses for her, a Texas beekeeper, but more importantly, it would mean losing a vital educational tool.

Thompson told the BBC in an interview: "There are so many people on the platform providing educational or informative content. That's the biggest loss, and that's what should be focused on. Beyond the economic aspect, we as a society—the people who use TikTok—would definitely feel that loss." It is estimated that around 170 million Americans use the app and website. Unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the platform, or the executive branch intervenes, the platform is set to shut down in the U.S. this Sunday.

The social media giant's fate ultimately lies in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, after Democratic and Republican lawmakers voted last year to ban the video-sharing app. Lawmakers are concerned about the app's ties to the Chinese government and believe it poses a national security risk. TikTok has repeatedly stated that it does not share information with Beijing. However, users and content creators say that the social media platform has become an important part of society, helping ordinary users gain millions of followers, quickly becoming the social media outlet of choice for some, and a primary source of income for others. Now, they are worried about what will happen if the ban cannot be stopped.

Some creators who make a living from social media apps told the BBC that TikTok is the superior platform. Thompson's experience confirms this, with her first TikTok video gaining over 50 million views within 24 hours of posting. She said, "I haven't had the same success on other platforms. For example, I can post the exact same video on Instagram, but the engagement is nowhere near what it is on TikTok." Ross Smith, who shares funny videos with his 98-year-old grandmother on TikTok and has over 24 million followers, believes that TikTok is one of the few platforms where it is easy to become a creator. He said that on TikTok, "you can become successful overnight."

Smith told the BBC that other platforms that have tried to replicate TikTok's short-video scrolling format have not been successful. Thompson agrees with this view. She said, "I rarely hear of someone going viral on Instagram, or someone being an Instagram influencer, but those words are constantly heard on TikTok." Fashion influencer Cody James, who has tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, told the BBC that audiences don't necessarily transfer from one platform to another. He said, "I know someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok but maybe only ten thousand on Instagram."

Many content creators rely on the income they earn on TikTok to make a living. Some told the BBC that their lives would change dramatically without the platform. Fashion designer and artist Nicole Bloomgarden told the BBC that when brands and companies need creators to produce advertising content, they want those creators to post on TikTok. "Indirectly, TikTok is my main source of income because all brands want their products promoted on the app," Bloomgarden said. While there are no statistics showing that TikTok is the primary source of income for creators, many told the BBC that it accounts for a large portion of their income. In 2022, a survey by creator-focused startup Linktree found that about 12% of full-time creators earn more than $50,000 a year from their social media platforms. In the survey of 9,500 people, about 46% said they earned less than $1,000.

This is not the first time a large social media platform has disappeared. In 2017, Vine—a platform where users could share video clips of up to six seconds long—shut down. It was a shock for creators at the time. Content creator Q. Parker, who has 37.7 million followers on TikTok, was one of them. He spent years building a following on Vine—the only platform he was using at the time—and when it disappeared, he said it "felt like my whole business shut down." But in a way, it was also good for him. It forced him to learn how to create different content for different audiences. "That experience taught me that if you're confident in your ability to create content, you'll build a following somewhere else," Parker told the BBC.

As the ban approaches, some creators have already started flocking to another Chinese platform, Xiaohongshu, a TikTok competitor popular among young people in China, Taiwan, and other Mandarin-speaking communities. Earlier this week, Xiaohongshu was the most downloaded app in Apple's U.S. app store. While some creators are diversifying their posting platforms, hoping to increase their audience elsewhere, others hope the ban will not become a reality. "TikTok is a behemoth," Parker said. "Part of me thinks it might be too big to fail." "It'll resurrect itself somehow; it's just too big of an economy now."