The U.S. Senate passed a bill late Tuesday that would allow the government to ban TikTok within a year if the company doesn’t make significant progress in separating from its China-based owner ByteDance. President Joe Biden said in a statement after the vote that he would sign the legislation on Wednesday.
The version of TikTok affected by the legislation is not the same platform that then-President Donald Trump first sought to abolish in 2020, citing national security concerns over its ties to China. TikTok, its user base, and the ecosystem of creators who make a living on the platform have grown, changed, and matured since then. And the potential consequences of the app’s disappearance have become more significant.
TikTok’s U.S. user base is much older than it was just a few years ago, there are more alternative places to post short videos, and many longtime influencers say they feel exhausted after so long trying to fight critics in Washington the app to combat. But the number of Americans financially dependent on TikTok has also grown, including a new class of YouTubers with smaller followings who make a living making e-commerce videos.
Hours before the Senate passed the anti-TikTok bill late Tuesday, YouTubers and others working in the influencer industry told WIRED that the approval would threaten the incomes and outrage of at least tens of thousands of people in the United States.
“This is my livelihood, this is how I’m going to feed my child, this is how a lot of people feed their children,” said a Pennsylvania-based TikTok creator named Aubrey, who posts under the pseudonym Makeupfresh. Aubrey, who asked that only her first name be used for privacy reasons, said she and other YouTubers she knows plan to vote against lawmakers who supported the TikTok ban in the November general election.
James Nord, founder of influencer marketing platform Fohr, said TikTok’s disappearance would be an “extinction event” for many YouTubers. “Most of them don’t have a sustained following on other platforms,” he said. “And they won’t be able to migrate their followers to Instagram.”
Tuesday’s vote was confirmed by House Democrats over the weekend, when they overwhelmingly approved a $95 billion foreign aid package that also includes measures against TikTok. The bill provides funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and was accelerated after Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel last week. It passed the Senate on Tuesday with bipartisan support 79-18, but is likely to face significant legal challenges – including from TikTok, according to a report by The Information.
TikTok did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement to Reuters on Saturday, the company accused elected officials of “using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian aid to once again push through a prohibition law that would trample on the free speech rights of 170 million Americans.”
Prasuna Cheruku, founder of influencer management agency Diversifi Talent, said that some of the veteran YouTubers she works with didn’t believe the ban would actually go through, but that political drama and TikTok’s evolution meant that some of them were disillusioned app.