🚨 TikTok on the Clock: What a TikTok Ban Could Mean for Creators

Hey there and welcome back to On Your Terms. So you’re right, I don’t normally post an episode today, but there’s a lot going on with TikTok and the potential TikTok ban that I thought I would check in with you quickly and offer you a little bit of illegal updates of sorts and some basic info around what’s going on and how it could impact you in your business, whether you’re on TikTok or not.

So here’s the deal. The long and short of it is that back in April, President Biden signed a law that said basically that if TikTok didn’t find a non-Chinese buyer that TikTok — a TikTok ban would go into effect starting on January 19th. So that buyer has not been found. There’s obviously been a lot of legal battles going on in the background back and forth.

You might’ve heard of some of them and ultimately it’s made its way all the way up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court heard the case recently and they seem poised to say that they are going to uphold the ban. They’re gonna allow this.Or they are going to uphold the ability to ban the app here in America. They’re going to uphold the law that was signed that will go into effect on Sunday. If, by chance, the company that owns TikTok doesn’t find a new buyer before then. So here’s the deal. It would go into effect on the Sunday, January 19th. If TikTok doesn’t do something in between then, or if for some reason the Supreme court doesn’t change its mind.

But the app will not be deleted off of your phone. So I think a lot of people are freaking out about it because they’re like, well, what’s this going to do? Like I post on there about my business and all this kind of stuff. Technically speaking, the app will still remain on your phone, but it won’t be able to be issued like new updates or anything like that because bite dance won’t be able to update the app in the app stores because the app will no longer be available on app store. So it won’t be on Apple, won’t be on Google.

Basically this case all has to do with the people who offered the app. So the Apples and the Googles of the world, and then the internet hosting services that back up all the data on servers like Oracle. So I think sometimes people get confused because they think this is a case that’s like going after individual users’ ability to post on TikTok. This has more to do with the ownership of TikTok and then the hosting of it and like those companies that are making it possible for TikTok to continue to operate as a company., but not the individual users.

So this app would still remain on your phone. You would still be able to open it and use it and all that kind of stuff. But because they can’t issue any new updates, eventually what happens is that there will be glitches within the app and then the app will become unusable. This actually happened in India because the app was actually banned in India back in 2020 and people were still able to use it for a little while. But then eventually it just became defunct. And now if you try to open up TikTok in your in the app on your phone in India, it just comes up with an error message.

So a lot of people also say like, well, can I just use like a VPN or something like that to go around it? And so VPNs are like, I don’t know the super technical definition, but it’s essentially masking your IP address to be coming from another location. So I use this a lot of times when I shop for airline tickets, it’s like a really good way to save money on air air travel or when you’re traveling and you want to watch like TV at home, you can use VPNs.

So people are like, well, can we get around the TikTok ban by using a VPN so that we could pretend like we’re using it from another country. The issue is that you might do that, but the majority of people are not going to do that. So I think the long and the short of it is like, if this band ends up going through, eventually the app would probably slow down, become defunct, and people will eventually stop using it. Who knows though, like whether this would stay in place, whether a new president would continue the ban or cancel the ban or something else would happen.

Or I don’t know who knows, maybe some other app will come up overnight and there will be something even more interesting than TikTok. But the point is that it’s obviously a concern to people who, you know, build their businesses off of it, get a lot of the traffic from it. I have friends who, you know, after years of kind of pitter pattering on Instagram, went over to TikTok and did really, really well.

I seem to have the kind of the opposite experience where like, I feel like I understand Instagram and how to make it work, but I cannot understand TikTok. And I’m just like, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Like it just doesn’t work. But I also just don’t give it a lot of effort and frankly, just like don’t care. And I’m at the stage where I don’t want to add another app. You know what I mean? But for those of you who do rely on this app or who really enjoy the app, I would say it’s very concerning when it comes to your business. If this ban stays in place.

Now you might be wondering like, well, what are the chances of Apple and Google like thumbing their nose at this and not complying? If history is going to tell us anything, it’s that Apple and Google will comply. So if there is an order, if the Supreme Court upholds this law and says you have to take this app out of your app store, is illegal to continue offering it. History tells us that they abide by these and they will take it down. There are civil penalties for them, not for you.

So there are civil penalties for the app stores or again, like Oracle for continuing to offer this app and host this app or host all the data for it. And so it would be a big logistical nightmare for them. So it’s not necessarily like something you have to worry about in terms of you’re not personally going to face fines. It’s just that them facing fines is going to have a trickle down effect to you.

Okay. So here’s the deal. Like after this year of going through the BOI thing, the Beneficial Ownership Information that required you to fill out like a new report. And then the TikTok man has been going back and forth, back and forth since like 2020 and 2019, whatever year it was that it first got banned. Like there’ve just been so many changes and like, will they, won’t they, we don’t know what’s happening that essentially I always have the same advice for you, which is that your business should not be built on any one thing where if that one thing goes away overnight, your entire business goes down, right?

So whether we’re talking about TikTok being banned or just Instagram falling out of favor or MySpace not being cool anymore or Threads not eventually taking off or Twitter turning into X and people like fleeing it, know there’s always going to be something. And the point is that it shouldn’t really matter that much to you ultimately, because even if let’s say you were really big on TikTok, I would have hoped that on all this time that you were building your business on TikTok, you were moving people elsewhere off of TikTok so that you had additional contact with them.

Now, my hope would be that they’re on your email list, but maybe you’ve moved them to your podcast or to a community somewhere, your YouTube channel or Instagram even, but they really shouldn’t live in one place anyway. So we want to — we always want to diversify our marketing efforts and we want to make sure that we are not too dependent on any one thing because like I said, we just don’t know what’s going to happen.

Remember when Instagram went down for a day and everyone was freaking out and then everybody came out of the woodwork being like, this is why you should have an email list. It’s like, you should have an email list because it’s really good for your business. You don’t need an email list just because Instagram might go down. It’s the better way to build your business because it’s how you’re going to actually reach people. And it’s something that you own.

So whether you know, ConvertKit is no longer in favor or MailChimp’s no longer in favor. It doesn’t matter because you own your list and you can take it with you. Can pack up and you can go somewhere else. Even with Substack, right? Like Substack, you own the email addresses. You can download them. You can add them to lists elsewhere. So ultimately that’s a much safer situation than any of these other apps.

Now, of course, I’m going to be pro email list because I’m just really big pro email list in my own business, but also because until tomorrow, January 17th, only you can get my free email list builder course as a thank you for me to you for pre ordering my debut book, When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy: A Practical No BS Guide To Successful Online Entrepreneurship. So you can head to the show notes or samvanderwielen.com/book to preorder my book right now. Head back to that same page.Input your order details so we can verify it and we will send you over access to my brand new free email list builder course right away.

All right. With that, I hope that was a quick little helpful TikTok update to understand what’s going on. We’ll see. And depending on what happens, I can come back. I can update you again, but that’s where things stand as of today. and we will see what happens. But like I said, don’t fret this. You’ve got this. Make sure that you’re diversifying your business and things change. Things will continue to change. But we will all be okay. All right, I’ll see you next week for our regularly scheduled episode.