Winners And Losers Of The TikTok Ban

It is 3:00 pm Friday here on the East Coast, and both the NYT and WSJ are reporting that it looks likely that the US Supreme Court will uphold the TikTok ban.

A quick look at some of the likely Winners and Losers

WINNERS

✅ META: Instagram is the only social media outlet remotely similar to TikTok. But while they both have short form videos, often from the same creators, Instagram's interface is markedly different: it's harder to search, feels a lot less personalized, and has a lot more FCC (Friend Created Content, e.g., pictures of your friends' birthday parties and pets) Meaning it's not really a replacement for TikTok as much as a temporary shelter

✅ GOOGLE: The Kids were starting to use TikTok as a search engine and so this nips that trend in the bud. In an alternate universe where Google was a nimble company, they'd push YouTube's Shorts business hard and give it a more personalized and intuitive interface as a way to grab some of the TikTok audience. But in this universe, that won't happen.

✅ "CHAT": For the same search-related reason as Google

✅ PROFESSIONAL NEWS ORGANIZATIONS: Lots of TikTokkers had built sizable audiences reporting the news even though they had zero background in journalism and the results were often both shoddy and inappropriate, e.g. they got their facts wrong and/or plagiarized actual journalists without even realizing that was wrong.

✅ NATIONAL SECURITY: Does anyone really believe the Chinese government doesn't have access to TikTok's data?

✅ TIK TOK CLONES: While there is no guarantee any of them will actually catch on, this gives them a fighting chance and it is the moment they've all been waiting for.

✅ TECH JOURNALISTS: Between articles comparing the merits of TikTok Clones, articles documenting teen despair at the loss of TikTok and personal essays/lengthy Bluesky threads on their own post-TikTok journey, it will be a very busy winter.

𝗟𝗢𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗦

❌ INFLUENCERS: Tens of thousands of influencers are going to lose most of their income and be forced to get real jobs, possibly in an entertainment industry that judges their output far more harshly than their TikTok followers ever did.

❌ CHINA: Enough said.

❌ GEN Z/GEN ALPHA: First Covid, now this. TikTok is a huge part of many (most?) under-25s lives, their main source of entertainment, news and things-to-talk-about. The loss of TikTok is going to leave a big hole, at least for a while. Skibidi, brah.

❌ TELCOS: Watching all those videos uses a whole lot of data. Sometimes more than is included in your parents' plan. Oops.