ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has a听Saturday听deadline to sell its operations to a U.S.-based company to prevent a federal ban on the app. That has content creators and businesses that got their start online taking steps to make sure they can still reach their audience.
Justin Carmona, who is , said he has been pushing his followers to also subscribe to his YouTube channel or follow him on Instagram and Snapchat.
“I’ve always gone out of my way to make sure that I’m diverse on other platforms, to make sure that I’m still monetized on other platforms,” Carmona said.
Carmona said while he still works as a bartender, the money he makes from content creation continues to be an important part of his income.
“I’ve been trying to focus on them more as a true source of income every month to make sure that I can pay my bills,” he said.
Carmona said losing TikTok would be a devastating blow, because he has amassed a following of more than 976,000 followers.
He said while his roots come from TikTok, he has seen advantages with the other platforms when it comes to connecting to his followers. On Instagram, he has just under 200,000 followers.
“TikTok has just been too broad of a platform. Every time I go on it, I feel like people there don’t care as much as they do on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook, on Snapchat, on everything else,” Carmona said.
TikTok users take the risk
Cayce Myers, professor and director of Graduate Studies at Virginia Tech’s School of Communication, said influencers are still sticking with the social media platform.
“If you look at the trends here, you don’t see a mass exodus of people off of TikTok, and you don’t see a mass exodus of businesses off of TikTok,” Myers said.
Like Carmona, Myers said many influencers are not putting all their eggs in one social media basket.
“The creators, I think, particularly those people who are leveraging the platform for their business, what has happened is that they have diversified, and so they’re on Instagram, they’re on these other platforms,” Myers said.
Myers said in recent months, with President Donald Trump expressing his support for the platform 鈥� a notion his campaign relied heavily on 鈥� he believes, at the very least, we will see a deadline extension from the White House.
In January, TikTok was temporarily unavailable when the initial ban kicked in January, which resulted in the service going dark for days, until the April 5 extension was given by the White House.
“It seems from all indicators, from the platform and from its users that there’s not the same level of concern that there was back in January when this first came about,” Myers said of the potential shutdown.
From TikTok鈥檚 video quality to its algorithms, he said it remains superior to a lot of its competitors, which is why many users have yet to delete their accounts. With millions still scrolling and posting on TikTok each day, he said shutting it down also could have a political impact.
“You have to look at the users, and the users may be demanding an extension as well, and there could be a political consequence for shutting it down. So that may be part of the calculation as well,” Myers said.
Carmona said he believes TikTok should be allowed to continue as is, because users already understand the security risks the app may pose and are not bothered by it. The content creator’s hope now is the uncertainty about the app will soon disappear.
“I just want someone to make a decision,” Carmona added.
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