US TikTok creators left in limbo awaiting potential ban

Will TikTok be banned this month?

That is the pressing question keeping creators and small business owners in the US in anxious limbo as they await a decision that could upend their livelihoods. The fate of the popular app will be decided by the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on January 10 over a law requiring TikTok to break ties with its Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a US ban.

At the heart of the case is whether the law violates the First Amendment with TikTok and its creator allies arguing that it does. The US government, which sees the platform as a national security risk, says it does not.

For creators, the TikTok doomsday scenarios are nothing new since president-elect Donald Trump first tried to ban the platform through executive order during his first term. But despite Trump’s recent statements indicating he now wants TikTok to stick around, the prospect of a ban has never been as immediate as it is now with the Supreme Court serving as the final arbiter.

If the government prevails as it did in a lower court, TikTok says it would shut down its US platform by January 19, leaving creators scrambling to redefine their futures.

“A lot of my other creative friends, we’re all like freaking out. But I’m staying calm,” said Gillian Johnson, who benefited financially from TikTok’s live feature and rewards programme, which helped creators generate higher revenue potential by posting high-quality original content. The 22-year-old filmmaker and recent college graduate uses her TikTok earnings to help fund her equipment for projects such as camera lenses and editing software for her short films “Gambit” and “Awaken! My Neighbor.”