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Turns out, the key to swift, bipartisan action in 2024 is mutual disdain for the FYP.
A foreign aid package that included a bill requiring ByteDance to sell its stake in TikTok was signed into law by President Biden on Tuesday after it passed the House on Saturday and the Senate on Tuesday.
The bill gives ByteDance nine months to make the transaction happen, with the possibility of a three-month extension granted by the president. Without action from ByteDance, TikTok will be banned in the US early next year.
Biden signing the bill into law comes after years of hearings, as well as state and federal attempts to ban TikTok that began during the Trump administration.
The battle begins: Immediately after Biden signed the bill, TikTok CEO Shou Chew took to the platform to address what he called “obviously a disappointing moment” and inform users of the company’s next steps.
“Rest assured, we aren’t going anywhere,” he said in the video. “We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the court. The facts and the Constitution are on our side, and we expect to prevail again.”
In a statement posted on Wednesday, TikTok affirmed its plans to challenge the law, claiming that a ban would “devastate 7 million businesses and silence 170 million Americans.” (TikTok did not immediately respond to Marketing Brew’s request for comment.)
Worth noting: Because the Chinese government put “content-recommendation algorithms” on its export control list in 2020, any sale of TikTok that includes its algorithm “would require a blessing from the Chinese government,” according to NPR. “Buying TikTok without its algorithm,” NPR noted, “would represent ‘an empty deal.’”
As for users…Perhaps unsurprisingly, many TikTokers began sharing their (largely negative) feelings about the looming ban once the news broke, with one saying that politicians “made the bread too expensive” and are now “banning the circus.” Another noted that in the midst of all of this, the Biden administration has been looking for TikTok creators to support his reelection campaign.
Creators and brands have been considering next steps and bracing for a post-TikTok world for some time now, James Brownstein, founder and general manager of influencer relations agency Poster Child, noted. He recommends that both groups continue to build out Instagram and YouTube followings and use A/B testing to see what sticks on those platforms, even if that means increasing budgets on those platforms.
While Brownstein ultimately anticipates a TikTok sale—whether that includes the algorithm or not—he advised that “we don’t want to overreact as an industry” right now.
“We have time,” he said. “There are going to be a lot of changes happening in the next 12 months to determine whether this process goes through or not and what it looks like, so I don’t think the industry should panic and pull out of TikTok holistically—just iterate, hedge a little bit, diversify, and be prepared for a worst-case scenario.”