Small business owners, educators, activists and young people who say they benefit from TikTok considered how to respond Wednesday after the House of Representatives passed a bill that could lead to a ban on the popular app.
“TikTok provides more benefit than harm than any other social media platform,” said Heather DiRocco, an artist and content creator in Montana who is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the court-blocked TikTok ban to abolish the state. She called the House decision “ignorant.”
If the bill passes the Senate and becomes law, “I will lose my largest platform as a content creator, which will be taken away from me without compensation or compensation,” she said.
She added: “I find it incredibly frustrating that our own politicians continue to make these baseless claims that TikTok needs to be banned without providing any evidence to support this. They have shown time and time again that they have absolutely no idea how the app works.”
While the bill's supporters insisted during debate that TikTok would not be banned, few creators or advocates accepted that assurance at face value.
Nora Benavidez, a civil rights and free speech attorney and senior staff attorney at Free Press, a nonpartisan organization focused on protecting civil liberties, said the requirement for TikTok's owner, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, to move forward within 180 days Separating the app must become law or banning TikTok from app stores and web hosts in the United States is effectively a ban.
“It is unrealistic that TikTok’s parent company could sell the app in the U.S. within six months, the period the administration mandates in this bill,” Benavidez said. “Given this likely scenario and the penalties they would face, if such an event were to occur, this would result in TikTok being banned.”
Initiators and opponents of the measure called the legislation a threat to their livelihoods and said it would have devastating economic impacts. According to a study released Wednesday by Oxford Economics, a financial advisory firm, TikTok increased small business sales by $14.7 billion in 2023 and contributed $24.2 billion to U.S. gross domestic product last year. TikTok has been found to support at least 224,000 jobs in the United States, with the app's greatest economic impact occurring in California, Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois.
“Any ban on TikTok is not just a ban on free speech – they are literally doing great harm to our economy,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who voted against the measure, said at a rally on Tuesday from opponents. “Small business owners across the country are using TikTok to grow our economy. Some of these creators and business owners rely solely on TikTok for their revenue and work. Pushing forward with a process that could ban the way they work, particularly for young people in this country, is misguided.”
Garcia added that the app is also an important way for people to socialize.
“As an openly gay person, I get so much gay information here and gay creatives come to share news,” Garcia said. “TikTok is a space of representation, and banning TikTok also means taking away a voice and a platform from the people of color and queer creators who have made TikTok their home.”
One YouTuber who attended Tuesday's rally, Gigi Gonzales, a 34-year-old financial educator from Chicago, said a TikTok ban would ruin her financially. “It would eliminate my biggest source of income,” she said.
She also said that shutting down the app would block access to important information. Gonzales uses the app to provide financial literacy information, particularly to other Hispanic women. Before TikTok, she tried to reach people through webinars, which few, if any, attended. Now it reaches millions.
TikTok has become a huge education hub in recent years. As part of its #LearnOnTikTok initiative, the company has collaborated with over 800 public figures, publishers, educational institutions and subject matter experts to bring more high-quality educational material to the app. TikTok also awards grants to educators and nonprofits that produce educational content.
“Both sides of the aisle know that TikTok is a critical tool that many, especially young people, use for education, advocacy and organizing,” said Annie Wu Henry, digital strategist and content creator. “It’s also incredibly clear that many of these politicians don’t fully understand what the app they want to ban is or why they want to ban it.”
Tiffany Yu, a 35-year-old disability activist from Los Angeles, said a ban on the app would be particularly harmful to disabled people, for whom it has been a lifeline during the isolation of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic that is still blocking public spaces many taboo.
“TikTok was able to help us find each other,” Yu said. “Losing TikTok would remove us from that social fabric.”
And because many disabled people still cannot safely return to work, TikTok is also an economic lifeline. “Our unemployment rate is twice that of our able-bodied peers,” she said. “Many of us are therefore turning to creative entrepreneurship to generate income. We came to the platform and found a way to lift ourselves out of poverty and be able to thrive and ultimately survive in a society that hasn’t supported us for a long time.”
Many YouTubers also expressed concern about the consequences of shutting down an important means of communication that tens of millions of Americans use.
“This is depriving millions of Americans of their right to free speech, and that’s really not OK,” said Carly Goddard, a content creator who is also a plaintiff in the case challenging Montana’s TikTok ban. “On TikTok you see… what’s going on in our world. In our world, there is more to worry about than banning an app. That should be the focus.”
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