👉 Background: TikTok has absolutely taken over the world in the past few years and enabled trends like “Gimme my money” and the Apple dance. It’s created new cultural icons like the little hippo Moo Deng and even shaped language with “demure” becoming Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year.

👉 What happened: Due to concerns to its national security, the Biden Administration warned Bytedance to either sell TikTok in the US or they would be banned on January 19th 2025. TikTok appealed this legislation to the US Court of Appeal - claiming that it was unconstitutional.

👉 What else: After failing in the Court of Appeal, TikTok has now appealed in the Supreme Court. But if this is unsuccessful, it would mean it’s all over red rover for TikTok’s US business, but also the livelihoods of millions of creators by early January.

What's the key learning?

💡Many creators are not only questioning the future on the TikTok platform, but the future of their businesses overall. That’s because after spending years building an audience, editing videos and creating a community, it can all be taken away in a moment.

💡It’s estimated that small businesses and content creators could lose $1.3 billion USD in just one month according to TikTok. And TikTok believe that this would increase each and every month of the ban.

💡Ultimately though, TikTok would be the biggest loser here. Bytedance expects to lose 29% of their targeted global ad revenue for 2025. So, TikTok and its creators are hoping that this ban will be overturned ASAP.