The GOP's War Against TikTok is Also a War on Black Content Creators
The House of Representatives bill to ban TikTok in the U.S. is allegedly to ward off a potential security threat — it ruining the livelihood of Black content creators is likely an added bonus.
When TikTok became the most downloaded app by American social media users in 2018, it was already two years old and had made waves across the global community. As a late-stage Gen Xer, I was reluctant to join the platform because it seemed super geared to Gen Zers who created the newest dance trends, and initially allowed for very short-form content. By the late 2010s, I was a loyalist if you will to the social media “Big 3” (Facebook, Instagram, and formerly Twitter), and perused LinkedIn when I needed more business-oriented content (or was looking for a job). I figured TikTok to be something harmless and fun for the kids who were not creating Facebook accounts and were becoming disenchanted with the direction IG was heading.
I started paying more attention to TikTok when more folks around my age started creating accounts. Before I created my account, I browsed the platform for a few months and noticed a lot of content was to my interest, and that the algorithm appeared to favor its creators in terms of how the content moved. Facebook and Instagram, later housed under the Meta umbrella, had become increasingly more restrictive with what non-boosted/paid-for content they allowed their users to see. In contrast, the floodgates for TikTok content appeared wide open so long as its creators were applying the right hashtags, or publishing content that tapped into the pulse of cultural discourse.
On August 7, 2021, I joined and posted my first TikTok video of one of my cats, Derrick, as I knew that #CatsofTikTok was a thing. Since that time, I have sparingly created TikTok videos that ranged from reciting poems, to sharing excerpts/explainers of editorials I wrote for this platform, to random whimsical musings. I have mostly used my TikTok account as a means to find socially relevant content of other Black, and marginalized content creators, and am hardly ever disappointed. Practically anything I’m looking for in video format, be it historical information, clips about art and music, or even a good old-fashioned conspiracy theory, I can find on TikTok and usually out the mouth of a Black content creator.
But if the House Republicans have their way, I won’t just lose the ease of browsing TikTok for informative or funny videos, a lot of Black American creators will lose access to a platform that has been a lucrative means of expression, and a pathway to independent financial success.
The majority-led House of Representatives recently voted on a bill called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that is calling on TikTok to either divest from its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, or face being banned nationwide in the U.S. The measure was overwhelmingly approved in the House and is now up for vote in the Senate. Should it be cleared in the Senate that ByteDance opts not to divest from its interest in the company, TikTok will face a ban in the U.S.
Republican leaders have stated that TikTok poses “a grave threat to U.S. national security” because it is a Chinese-owned company. As if the Silicone Valley heads at Meta have not also had a history of compromising the privacy and data of American social media users. But as often as Congress has bickered with Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk over the safety measures of Meta, specifically among its youngest users, there have not been calls for an all-out ban. One, because Meta, and initially Twitter, were the inventions of white American men, and two, because of that, the United States government has more confidence in its ability to regulate those companies.
Regulation over TikTok? Not so much.
But the more telling part of the House’s desire to disempower TikTok has less to do with fears of security breaches and more to do with their fear of the platform’s ability to “influence U.S. public opinion,” as it does not actively shadow-ban content that does not violate the Terms of Use agreement. This has been most evident over the past few months as the genocide taking place in Palestine has caused several former users of Meta platforms to be kicked off Instagram and Facebook for sharing imagery and video of the carnage inflicted by the Israeli government on Palestinians.
On the contrary, TikTok has allowed a fair amount of messaging and on-the-ground reporting to be published, as they are not beholden to the same oversight by the U.S. government that Meta apparently is.
There is, however, a less obvious benefit to House Republicans’ desire to ban TikTok from American users, and it is one rooted in equity among its most influential creators — Black folks. TikTok, which is home to 170 million American users with over 5 million of them being business accounts, has incentivized Black entrepreneurship and content creation in a country that has denied Black creators, and specifically Black women creators, venture capital to launch their ventures. A pending TikTok ban would have a real-world impact on popular influencers such as Summer Lucille, who recently told Essence Magazine that she was not able to break her monthly sales goals of her plus-sized fashion line, Juicy Body Goddess, until joining TikTok despite advertising on other social media platforms for years.
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TikTok has had its share of inequity complaints from its Black content creators around censorship and content suppression. They issued an apology for previous mistreatments, but seemingly more than anything, have maintained a platform where Black creators can make a living off of their ingenuity in ways that far exceed that of the other social media giants.
And if history has taught us anything about the GOP, is that they are not fans of any form of equity or leveled playing fields when it comes to Black folks making a living.
Of course, TikTok is not the only source of revenue-generating for Black creatives, but its ease of accessibility makes it an invaluable tool for those who have experienced an uptick in commerce because of it, or who have been able to forge a different career path in the world of content creation.
And the haters don’t like that.
Thank you for this article. There is nothing wrong with TicToc except it tells the truth about what is going on in Gaza. This platform is harmless, but pisses the white male society off. I do not have nor will I ever have an account on any of the Meta platforms because they sensor any content which shows Israel as anything other than what they are: a society who wants to purge the land of the Palestinian people by any means necessary. They will protect that nation and undermine the US. I do not have a TikTok account so that is not my interest. There are so many sites that indulge in white supremacy and I see no one going after them. We do indeed live in sad times.