Days away from the possible ban of TikTok in the U.S., some Winnipeg content creators are worried about what lies ahead.
Canadians will still be able to download the popular social media app if the Chinese-owned platform goes dark in America on Sunday, but the number of views they are used to seeing on their posts are likely to decline.
Peace Ogebule opens TikTok as soon as she wakes every morning, checking for messages and comments on posts she’s made.
A 21-year-old University of Manitoba student from Nigeria, Ogebule has developed an online community, sharing various aspects of her daily lifestyle — from fitness and study habits to fashion and beauty tips — since late 2021.
“It is a space for me to interact with a lot of people, but also share my day-to-day life. The reason why I’m mostly worried about it is because I have a connection with my followers,” Ogebule said.
She is trying to remain positive despite the impending ban, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday. But she admits the uncertainty surrounding the app’s future has left her dismayed.
Under the law, TikTok will be banned Sunday unless ByteDance divests of the app, which it’s shown no indication of doing. If the ban takes effect, the app is expected to be removed from app stores, and its American users will no longer be able to receive updates for it.
The Biden administration has said the ban targets control of the app by a foreign adversary, and that TikTok could continue operating as is if it is freed from China’s control. But it said implementing the ban will fall to the incoming administration of Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated next week.
About half of Ogebule’s 82,000 followers are from the U.S., and 60 per cent of the brand deals she made last year came from American-based companies.
Canada is not among the countries that qualify for the Creator Rewards Program, which sees TikTok pay some content creators for short videos, so brand deals and commissions are the two primary ways Ogebule generates income from posting videos on the app.
She expects the income she makes from brand deals, as well as her TikTok following, will shrink once the app is banned from the U.S.
“I still have a little bit of the Canadian community, but I believe that half of my followers are American. So that means losing half of my audience. So yeah, it would be very disheartening,” she said.
“All that hard work going down the drain.”
Without TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users, Ogebule worries brands would lose the ability to discover creators like herself.
“Would all of the views that are from American viewers just go away? That would make my engagement go to the ground,” she said.
-
Charmaine Jennings sees a silver lining in the ban for Canadian content creators.
“It’s possible to be worried in the sense that if you have a large U.S. following that could drop significantly once the ban hits. However, it might give content creators in Canada more of a space to take up room on the app and become more of a prominent presence on TikTok,” said Jennings, a TikTok content creator who also owns Strategic Charm Boutique, a local digital marketing agency.
A portion of TikTok users, including content creators, have already pivoted their reach, jumping to other platforms, including Instagram, YouTube and RedNote — another Chinese-based app.
“So I think even though TikTok is not set to be banned in Canada, Canadian creators are thinking about other apps as well to kind of be the first early adopters,” Jennings said.
A self-dubbed smaller content creator, she doesn’t think the ban will impact her, nor her agency much, but she says each content creator’s situation will differ based on their following and the videos they create.
“You just have to shift and be able to adapt and recognize that things may change a little bit,” Jennings said.
Ogebule started to pivot toward Instagram, but said it took three to four months for her to finally start getting attention on that social media platform.
Her following has also been slow to build — around 21,000.
“With TikTok, it’s very easy to get a video that will go viral and can kind of set up your account for good. But Instagram is really, really hard, especially because people on there don’t engage as much as with TikTok,” she said.
“People on Tiktok engage with almost every piece of content coming across it.”
Ogebule hopes to at least quadruple her Instagram following but is also crossing her fingers that TikTok doesn’t go dark in the U.S. forever.
Manitoba content creators express concern over TikTok ban in U.S.
A looming U.S. TikTok ban is starting to sink in for content creators whose livelihoods rely on the popular video app. For some Manitoba creators, there is concern about potential ripple effects in Canada.
