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DiRocco makes money on TikTok through sponsorship deals with brands whose produce she touts in her videos and through the platform’s creativity beta program, which pays creators based on the number of views they amass on videos over one minute in length.
“I could not replicate the money that I make on TikTok through any other platform,” she said.
If the bill passes the Senate and becomes law, “I will lose my biggest platform as a content creator, stripped from me with no recompense or compensation,” she said.
She added, “I find it incredibly frustrating that our own politicians continue to make these baseless claims of needing TikTok to be banned without providing any proof to the reason of why. They have shown that they do not know how the app works at all, over and over again.”
While proponents of the bill insisted during the debate that it doesn’t ban TikTok, few creators or advocates accepted that assurance at face value.
Nora Benavidez, a civil rights and free-speech attorney and senior counsel at Free Press, a nonpartisan organization focused on protecting civil liberties, said the requirement that TikTok’s owner, the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, divest itself of the app in 180 days of its becoming law, or see TikTok barred from app stores and web hosts in the United States, is effectively a ban.
“It’s unrealistic that TikTok’s parent company would be able to sell the app within the U.S. within six months, which is the time period the government mandates under this bill,” said Benavidez, “Faced with that likely scenario, the penalties they’d face in the case of such an event would result in TikTok being banned.”
Creators and opponents of the measure called the legislation a threat to their livelihoods and said it would have devastating economic impact. A study issued Wednesday by Oxford Economics, a financial consultancy, said TikTok drove $14.7 billion in small-business owners’ revenue in 2023 and contributed $24.2 billion to U.S. gross domestic product last year. It found that TikTok supports at least 224,000 jobs in the United States, with the app’s greatest economic impact seen in California, Texas, Florida, New York and Illinois.
TikTok creators can make money in a variety of ways. Similar to YouTube, TikTok has a program where creators get paid based on the number of views their posts receive. Users can also make money on TikTok through brand partnerships, product placements, collaborations, tips from their fans, and by participating in TikTok Shop, a portal on the app that allows businesses to sell items there.
Brandon Hurst, a 30-year-old who owns a plant shop, said that TikTok has become integral to his small business. A year ago, he said he was planning to shut down because of lackluster sales, but joining TikTok revived his business. He sold over 50,000 plants last year.
“Banning TikTok would shut down a lot of small businesses, including mine,” he said. “These representatives and senators don’t understand what they’re doing won’t just harm people they call content creators, it would hurt small businesses.”
“Any ban on TikTok is not just banning the freedom of expression — you’re literally causing huge harm to our national economy,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who voted against the measure, told a rally of opponents Tuesday. “Small-business owners across the country use TikTok to move our economy forward. Some of these creators and these business owners solely depend on TikTok for their revenue and their job. To rush a process forward that could ban their form of work, particularly young people in this country, is misguided.”
Garcia added that the app was also an important way for people to connect.
“As an openly gay person, it’s a place where I get so much gay information and where gay creators come to share news,” Garcia said. “TikTok is a space for representation, and banning TikTok also means taking away a voice and a platform for people of color and queer creators that have made TikTok their home.”
One creator who attended Tuesday’s rally, Gigi Gonzales, a 34-year-old financial educator in Chicago, said a TikTok ban would destroy her financially. “It would get rid of my biggest source of revenue,” she said. Gonzales monetizes on TikTok through brand deals, speaking gigs that she secures through TikTok, and digital courses that she sells through TikTok.
Gonzales said TikTok has also boosted sales of her book, Cultura and Cash: Lessons from the First Gen Mentor for Managing Finances and Cultural Expectations, which she published in January. “I don’t have a big publisher behind me so it’s not like I can pay for all these PR and marketing costs,” she said.
Gonzales said shutting down the app would also cut off access to crucial information on financial literacy, especially to other Hispanic women. Before TikTok, Gonzales was trying to reach people through webinars, which few if anyone would attend. Now she reaches millions, many of whom buy her courses and books.
TikTok has become a huge educational hub in recent years. Through its #LearnOnTikTok initiative, the company has partnered with over 800 public figures, publishers, educational institutions and subject matter experts to bring more high-quality educational material to the app. TikTok also gives grants to educators and nonprofits that produce educational content.
“Both sides of the aisle know that TikTok is a crucial tool that many, particularly young people, use for education, advocacy and organizing,” said Annie Wu Henry, a digital strategist and content creator. “It’s incredibly clear, too, that many of these politicians don’t fully understand what the app is that they are trying to ban or even why they are trying to ban it.”
Tiffany Yu, a 35-year-old disability activist in Los Angeles, said banning the app would be especially harmful to disabled people for whom it has been a lifeline during the isolation of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, which is still keeping public spaces off-limits for many.
“TikTok has been able to help us find each other,” Yu said. “Losing TikTok would remove us from that social fabric.”
And because many disabled people still can’t safely return to work in person, TikTok is also an economic lifeline. “Our unemployment rates are twice that of our non-disabled peers,” she said. “So a lot of us turn to creative entrepreneurship to generate income. We’ve come onto the platform and we’ve figured out a way to leapfrog ourselves out of poverty and be able to thrive and finally survive in a society that hasn’t supported us for a long time.”
Many creators also expressed concern about the implications of cutting off a major communications tool that tens of millions of Americans use.
“This strips millions of Americans of their rights of freedom of speech, and it’s really not okay,” said Carly Goddard, a content creator who also is a plaintiff in the case against Montana’s TikTok ban. “On TikTok, you see … what is going on in our world. There is more to worry about in our world than banning an app. That should be the focus.”
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