On 18 January, TikTok went dark across the United States. A few hours later, the following day, it returned, greeting users with a message: “As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the US!”
The text made reference to President Donald Trump’s promise to issue an executive order on 20 January, the day of his inauguration. The order pushed to delay the law banning TikTok for 75 days while his administration determines “the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans”.
Under the executive order, TikTok has until April to find an American buyer (President Trump is pushing for 50 per cent US ownership). For now, likely suitors are a handful of billionaires that seem to be aligned with the Trump administration (much like the slew of Big Tech founders sitting alongside the President at his inauguration). Trump said on 21 January that he would be open to Elon Musk or Oracle chairman Larry Ellison purchasing the platform, though TikTok denied reports that Musk was a possible buyer before the election and the blackout.
For many of the Americans that did not vote for Trump, TikTok’s pandering to the president left a sour taste. And the temporary blackout has made users hyper-alert to changes on the platform, says Louise Yems, strategy director at creative marketing agency The Digital Fairy. Some users said their algorithm felt different post-blackout and voiced concerns about censorship, per insights firm Ambassco.
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for TikTok said that the platform’s policies and algorithms did not change over the weekend. The company also notes that it is working to restore its US operations back to normal and expects some temporary instability as it does so. This could impact TikTok features or users’ access to the app, the spokesperson flagged.
TikTok’s catch-22
Political chatter aside, the blackout made the stakes clearer than ever for brands and creators, who had been inundated with ban rumours since 2020, but only forced to reckon with the reality of a ban late last year when TikTok’s attempt to overturn it was rejected. While Instagram spurred the rise of the influencer, the job was, for a time, still niche and unattainable. “TikTok really widened the scope of being able to achieve that,” says Alexandra Hildreth, writer and fashion commentator. “It made having a following a lot more mainstream.”
TikTok has enabled creators to build careers online unlike any other app. So much so that it’s now caught up in the American economy, Hildreth says: “Should it go away, there would be a very visible economic downturn.” Creators have launched businesses on TikTok, businesses allocate major spend to TikTok and people themselves are getting popular in a way that hasn’t existed before, she says. “People recognise that, even with the weird messaging from [TikTok], we can’t really walk away from it yet,” she adds.
Those who built their followings on TikTok are left feeling ambivalent about an app on which they know they’re reliant, but they feel isn’t necessarily working in their best interests.
“It’s an amalgamation of a few things — the rise of right-wing propaganda and general political ties definitely puts a sour taste in the mouth — same as with Twitter [now X],” says writer and creator Molly Elizabeth Agnew, who has shifted from posting daily fashion content to only covering tentpole events. “It feels as though, no matter how hard I try to manually curate my FYP, content that I do not align with is still being pushed to me, and I’m sceptical of potential deals that have been done behind the scenes to keep the app running in the States. In general, I’m not overly enthused about using a platform that is being used as a prop/distraction for much darker matters.”
Not everyone is bemoaning TikTok’s recent alignment with the new administration, however. On the night of TikTok’s removal and return to the US, young MAGA-aligned creators attended a slew of inauguration parties and celebrations. One was sponsored by TikTok. For these creators, the platform’s changes at the top are a positive.
For other creators, the chaos surrounding the app was a catalyst to act on growing fatigue with the fast-paced platform that had been bubbling before ban discussions even kicked off.
Fashion content creator Heather Hurst says she deleted the app when she heard it was going to be banned — not because of ties to the new administration, but because she’d grown tired of the need to constantly produce output to retain eyeballs. Now that the platform is live again, she can’t redownload it because it’s not on the App Store, as required by the law. “I feel like I’ve been set free in a way,” she says.
Nadine Choe, who runs hospitality and fashion newsletter The Stanza, also deleted the app the night of the ban. “For the last several months, I’ve been feeling ambivalent about TikTok — on one hand, I’m grateful because I started building my platform there, but in the last year or so, I feel like the addictive brain-rot nature of it doesn’t feel good,” she says. “When you’re a creator on TikTok, it’s hard not to feel like a slave to it.”
But creators can’t simply swear off the app. Ambassco, which released a report on the ban, has found that, though many creators have mixed feelings — and some say they feel less motivated to create content — getting back to business as usual is the primary focus. “Most creators’ priorities seem to lie in the ability to return to normal programming and income streams,” says Sofia Miller, head of brand partnerships at Ambassco.
Though Hurst isn’t itching to get back on, she does wish she could redownload TikTok for brand-deal purposes, noting that a lot of brands are staying on the platform. “I’m not going to purchase a $5,000 phone that has TikTok downloaded on Ebay anytime soon. But I am trying to figure out how to download it because I have had campaign requests for partners that I love,” she says. “I’m seeing in my inbox that there still is, from the brand side, a push to stay on the platform and do campaigns on there.”
“I had jobs switch from TikTok to Instagram and back to TikTok in 24 hours,” echoes Cora Delaney, founder of creative agency Eyc Ltd.
Will this keep creators on the app — and draw those who have left back in?
To stay or to go?
It’s not easy for creators to move away from TikTok, as some did from X. Where X was a platform for users to express quick-hit views, TikTok is where creators earn most of their money. So if brands stay on, creators will stay on. And vice versa.
“From a business perspective, I would still continue to use it, because at the end of the day, this is my job and where my income is,” says fashion creator Berenice Castro, for whom TikTok makes up the biggest percentage of her earnings. She’s hopeful that, with an ownership change, there wouldn’t be a removal of monetisation via TikTok’s Creator Fund. “I know there would be so many creators affected by this, and it’s a somewhat steadier income than depending on brand deals.”
Some brands, though, are rethinking their level of investment in TikTok. Emily-Jean McDonagh, director of consumer engagement at beauty brand Ethique World, says the brand is already fielding requests from talent to pivot to other platforms. So they’re pulling back from the app and diversifying. “TikTok alone doesn’t feel safe for the longevity of our content or consumer base,” she says.
For Pechuga Vintage owner Johnny Valencia, on the other hand, the ban drove a newfound interest in the platform. He noticed some users saying they wished they’d taken TikTok more seriously; others wishing they’d diversified beyond it. He’s in the former camp: “TikTok is free to use, so why not take advantage of that?”
Ultimately, Gen Z wants socials that empower creators and provide a level playing field for income opportunities, according to Ambassco’s report on the ban. Other platforms simply don’t match up. Only 2 per cent of Ambassco’s cohort, for instance, use Instagram for the same purposes as TikTok.
In Valencia’s view, the app’s increasing tie-up with America’s leading billionaires — and President — renders it no different than any other of the apps we’re reliant on. “If Meta is tied to Zuckerberg, and TikTok is tied to Trump, and Zuckerberg is tied to Trump… it’s like the ouroboros [the ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail],” he explains. “We’re all just another brick on the social media grid. I don’t mean that to sound so grim, but unless you’re willing to do a complete social media purge, it’s unlikely we really have a choice.”
That said, the fast migration to Xiaohongshu (aka Red Note) shows that users are willing to deprioritise platforms that no longer align with their goals, The Digital Fairy’s Yems says. “People are not that easily herded and will resist platforms whose owners they don’t ideologically align with,” she says. “And they won’t settle for what they deem to be an inferior product.”
Hurst may be willing to come back to TikTok (once she can redownload the app), but says she won’t be using it in the same way. “I was initially excited about the fact that the algorithm was so tailored to you. But then, of course, everybody was always lamenting the algorithm and how it was flattening culture — in my realm, flattening things like personal style.” Now, she says, people are realising that discoverability on TikTok isn’t exactly what they’d hoped. “[They’re] realising that they might as well just curate the type of media that they want to be receiving.”
What does the future hold?
We’re in for a shift. Though there are ample alternative short-form video offerings — especially as platforms jump to cater to ‘TikTok refugees’ — some creators don’t want to stay on the short-form hamster wheel.
Creators also need to be looking at how to leverage their skill sets. To writer Hildreth, the conversations emerging now are reminiscent of those during influencing’s big rise in 2018. “The big thing was always like: ‘What if this platform gets deleted tomorrow? What’s your skill?’ This was the first time we actually saw that come to pass,” she explains.
In the fashion realm, Substack is emerging as a popular contender, as editorial staff and creators alike join the platform. For its part, on 23 January, the company announced a $20 million Substack Creator Accelerator Fund designed to help creators shift their paid-subscription audience to the platform.
“I feel like it will almost harken back to OG blogger vibes,” Hildreth says. A lot of influencers in 2018 had blogs they sent their Instagram followers to, she points out. “I think it’s gonna get back to that shopping newsletter kind of vibe.” But the newsletter space is already crowded. “I do think that it’s so oversaturated that if you are part of the TikTok-jumping-ship wave, you’re already too late,” she says.
And it won’t work for everyone. Substack’s format is different to TikTok — which is part of the appeal — but also means creators can’t copy and paste their strategies. Those not versed in writing require a different alternative.
“It’s not as simple as just doing what you’re currently doing, but elsewhere,” Yems says. “Until those other platforms supercharge their algorithms on a par with TikTok’s, it is difficult to see the path forward.”
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