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WASHINGTON — Will TikTok be banned this month?
That's the pressing question keeping creators and small business owners in anxious limbo as they await a decision that could upend their livelihoods. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Jan. 10 over a law requiring TikTok to break ties with its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a U.S. ban.
At the heart of the case is whether the law violates the First Amendment with TikTok and its creator allies arguing that it does. The U.S. government, which sees the platform as a national security risk, says it does not.
If the government prevails as it did in a lower court, TikTok says it would shut down its U.S. platform by Jan. 19, leaving creators scrambling to redefine their futures.
"A lot of my other creative friends, we're all like freaking out. But I'm staying calm," said Gillian Johnson, who benefited financially from TikTok's live feature and rewards program, which helped creators generate higher revenue potential by posting high-quality original content. The 22-year-old filmmaker and recent college graduate uses her TikTok earnings to help fund her equipment for projects such as camera lens and editing software for her short films "Gambit" and "Awaken! My Neighbor."
Johnson said the idea of TikTok going away is "hard to accept."
Online communities risk being disrupted, and the economic fallout could especially be devastating for those who mainly depend on TikTok and have left full-time jobs to build careers and incomes around their content.
For some, the uncertainty has led them to question whether to continue creating content at all, according to Johnson, who says she knows creators who have been thinking about quitting. But Nicla Bartoli, the vice president of sales at the Influencer Marketing Factory, said the creators she has interacted with have not been too worried since news about a potential TikTok ban has come up repeatedly over the years, and then died down.
"I believe a good chunk think it is not going to happen," said Bartoli, whose agency works to pair influencers and brands.
Trump, for his part, has already asked the justices to put a pause on the ban so he could weigh in after he takes office. In a brief — written by his pick for solicitor general — Trump called the First Amendment implications of a TikTok ban "sweeping and troubling" and said he wants a "negotiated resolution" to the issue, something the Biden administration had pursued to no avail.
While waiting for the dust to settle in Washington, some creators are exploring alternatives ways to promote themselves or their business, encouraging users to follow them on other social media platforms or are investing more time producing non-TikTok content.
Instagram and YouTube are expected to benefit financially if TikTok vanishes.
According to a report by Goldman Sachs, the so-called creator economy, which has been fueled in part by TikTok, could be worth $480 billion by 2027.
Because the opportunity to monetize content exists across a range of platforms, a vast amount of creators have already diversified their social media presence. However, many TikTok creators have credited the platform — and its algorithm — with giving them a type of exposure they did not receive on other platforms.
Despite fears about the fate of TikTok, industry analysts note creators are generally avoiding making any big changes, like abandoning platform, until something actually happens.
If the Supreme Court does not delay the ban, as Trump is asking them to do, app stores and internet service providers would be required to stop providing service to TikTok by Jan. 19. That means anyone who doesn't have TikTok on their phone would be unable to download it. TikTok users would continue to have access, but the prohibitions — which will prevent them from updating the app — will eventually make the app "unworkable," the Justice Department has said.
TikTok said in court documents that it estimates a one-month shutdown would cause the platform to lose approximately a third of its daily users in the U.S. The company argues a shutdown, even if temporary, will cause it irreparable harm, a legal bar used by judges to determine whether to put the brakes on a law facing a challenge.
