Influencer who built her career on TikTok reacts to potential ban: ‘It might be great. It might be awful’

Living in the digital age, an era bolstered by E-commerce advertising and influencer marketing, there’s a clear dependence on social media platforms like TikTok. Consumer demand is met with content creation, giving way to a society fixated on finding the best products by trusting the recommendations of strangers with thousands of online followers. Needless to say, in-person shopping has been replaced by an endless catalog of clips produced by influencers on TikTok’s “For You Page,” expertly selling what they deem as the “best of the best” in fashion, beauty, wellness, and beyond.

Yet, a new piece of legislation could potentially threaten the lucrative monster of influencer marketing with the proposed ban of TikTok in the United States. On 23 April, the US Senate passed a bill that would require the China-based parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, to sell its platform in nine months under the threat of a ban. The fate of the app and the subsequent livelihood of content creators who depend on the video platform for profitable brand deals was left in the hands of President Joe Biden. As of 24 April, President Bident has officially signed the bill into law.

It will likely be a year before the ban officially goes into effect. TikTok will not magically delete from the phones of the 170 million Americans using the app if Byte Dance does not sell, it’s more probable that the app will no longer be accessible to download through the app store and users with the app won’t get platform updates, eventually making it incompatible with their software. However, even if TikTok isn’t available through the app store, the platform may be able to be downloaded through a virtual private network (VPN) or foreign sim card.

Still, what does