Federal legislation banning the fastest-growing app in the country has been making national headlines for years now.
The app is on its deathbed today. The Supreme Court this morning upheld a law banning the app unless its Chinese parent company ByteDance sells the platform by this Sunday.
James Hoffman, 20, was one of the minds behind Maricopa’s TikTok Rizz Party that took social media by storm in May. While the Tortosa resident’s “Rizz Party” was just for fun, he said TikTok has actually been part of his professional life since 2020.
“I, myself, create content, as well as I manage and work directly with several content creators,” Hoffman said.
James Hoffman, 20, talks about his TikTok Rizz Party in May, 2023. [Brian Petersheim Jr.]He works mostly with gamers, who record themselves playing games like Minecraft, Roblox or Grand Theft Auto V. The partnership is lucrative for the creator and manager alike.
“It’s just the most cost efficient, organic way to generate traffic and advertise that there’s ever been,” he said. “That’s why I teach other people and work directly with them to turn TikTok views to actual money.”
Luckily, Hoffman doesn’t keep all his virtual eggs in one short-form basket. He uses similar video-sharing apps like YouTube Shorts to market his content.
With the impending demise of the hub of brainrot, Hoffman says he thinks other short-form social media platforms will fight for wayward TikTokers.
“I think people will migrate between Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts for sure,” he said. “It’ll definitely be a marketing battle between the two.”
Senita resident Natalie Hanania, 20, described the ban as an unnecessary government overstep.
“I think it is a waste of our government’s time to be focusing on such a minor issue, even if all the things that they are afraid of are true,” Hanania said. “People have built lives on this app, this app has saved lives, so even if their fears are true, it has done more positive than negative.”
She said she would prefer restrictions to a total ban. Attorneys representing the U.S. told the Supreme Court that ByteDance posed a homeland security threat.
Tortosa resident Seth Pope, 21, who has more than 10,000 TikTok followers, said the high court’s action “shows the lengths the corporate oligarchy will go to not only smother free speech, but secure their profits at the expense of our freedom.”
“The ban has nothing to do with national security, but the amount of Leftist voices on TikTok that don’t get suppressed, when on every other platform they would,” he said. “The fact this ban had support from both sides of the aisle shows that the Republican and Democrat party are both corporatist in nature.”
Pope said “reactionary culture wars” are a distraction for the so-called “one percent” to pad their wealth at the layman’s expense.
“The American Dream that boomers enjoy is no longer feasible at this stage in capitalism,” he said.
Copper Ridge resident Aulaina Rasmussen, 26, said the specter of a TikTok ban upsets her as a monthslong content creator on the platform “where people can be real and post their true thoughts.”
“We are connected with everyone around the globe and can see what is going on in real time,” she said. “I think the ban has nothing to do with Chinese spies and everything to do with the fact that the truth cannot be filtered.”
Another Maricopa TikToker had already moved on from the platform once the Supreme Court made its decision.
Bernard Porpino, owner of B & P Freeze Dry Candy in Glennwilde, had sold more than 16,000 units through TikTok’s Shop page. One of his videos recorded more than 1 million views.
But around the New Year, Porpino pulled his product from the digital shelves of TikTok’s store because the Chinese-owned app “takes a big commission from all sales,” he said.
TikTok Shop recorded $179 million in revenue in September; two months later, revenue was $1.2 billion. With a “B.”
Porpino said he would rather try his luck stocking his freeze-dried candies on retail shelves and at farmers markets in Maricopa. Others, like 21-year-old Ethan Hester from Tortosa, are migrating to RedNote, a wholly Chinese-owned and operated app (TikTok is based in the U.S. and has American executives).
RedNote is “popping off,” said Hoffman, but it’s the app the government “genuinely should be afraid of.”
“Everybody plans to switch to RedNote … I think the fight will just start all over again if TikTok gets banned,” Hoffman said.
Hester, for one, isn’t worried about contributing to a fissure in national security by availing his data to an app that is officially called 小红书.
“Politicians are using the fear of China as a way to score political points,” he said.
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