The long road ahead |
US President Joe Biden signed the TikTok bill into law Wednesday, giving the company’s Chinese parent, ByteDance Ltd., 270 days to sell its stake in the popular music video app or face a ban. But conversations with users, creators and merchants on the app – and the videos still being posted – show people aren’t fleeing just yet.
Advertisers may be shelling out even more to reach TikTok’s users. After the first version of the divest-or-ban bill passed in the House of Representatives, TikTok saw a 20% increase in weekly advertising spending compared with the prior week, according to data intelligence platform, Tracer.
Take Scott McIntosh, who relies on TikTok videos as the primary marketing tool for his Cell Phone Seats, a phone bracket that sits in car cup holders. While McIntosh is starting to look at alternative places to tout his wares, “I don't think it's going to go away, though,” he said.
You could chalk it up to a case of TikTok-ban fatigue. It’s been a perennial conversation since then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 executive order threatening to boot the app, which was later blocked by a judge and pushed aside when Biden came into office. There were also a slew of bills proposed in Congress last year (and then forgotten) that would’ve flatly banned the app.
This attempt is much more serious — the bill is law and the countdown has begun. Though there still seem to be a few outs. The legislation itself leaves room for TikTok to continue operating if ByteDance sells its stake (though the parent company sees that as a last resort).
ByteDance and TikTok have also made clear they plan on fighting in the courts, aiming to overturn or perhaps delay the enforcement of the new rules until a friendlier administration takes power. Still, Bloomberg Intelligence puts legal success for TikTok at just 30%, according to litigation analyst Matthew Schettenhelm.
If Trump, the Republican Party frontrunner, wins the presidential election in November, TikTok may find him to be a friendlier audience. These days, he’s changed his tune on the app, saying in recent weeks that TikTok should be able to stay in America.
The conclusion of any of those routes is at least nine months out, which on the internet is a very, very long time. Too far for some TikTokers to be worried just yet. Between now and then, there’s time for thousands of trends, hundreds of viral songs and so many TikTok Shop purchases.
Some are already taking advantage of the moment, like seller Kdm Vintage, who has sold more than 1,300 sweatshirts embroidered across the chest with a phrase that captures how many users feel: “My tummy hurts and I’m mad at the government.”—Alex Barinka