TikTok ban looms, leaving content creators' livelihoods in jeopardy

It took roughly four years for Christopher Rudd to build up a 716,000-plus following on TikTok. After Friday's Supreme Court decision, there's a chance the platform ‒ Rudd's main source of income ‒ goes dark.

Rudd – who goes by Kit Lazer online – had juggled a day job with creating TV- and film-related content for years. When a new episode or movie dropped on a streaming platform, Rudd would wake up at 5 a.m. to watch, record a review, edit and post on TikTok early enough to compete with the critics who were given early access, and then head to his typical 9-to-5 in sales.

The work paid off; Rudd started collecting enough views and brand deals to quit his day job last June. While full-time content creation comes with its own challenges, Rudd said the gig has been a dream come true, offering him the chance to attend film festivals and interview stars like Glen Powell.

“I just did it as a hobby because it makes me happy to pretend, and then it was actually working, and I couldn’t believe it,” Rudd, 36, said. “Only TikTok can do that.”

But Rudd and other content creators on the app face an uncertain future. TikTok is likely to go dark Sunday after the Supreme Court upheld a law effectively banning the app. Blake Chandlee, TikTok's president of global business solutions, estimated in a court filing that just a one-month shutdown could lead to nearly $300 million in lost earnings for almost 2 million U.S. creators, said

“This moment feels quite devastating for so many people, but in particular for the creators,” said Brooke Duffy, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Department of Communication who researches digital and social media industries. The ban has “the potential to sever their livelihood without a fallback.”

Part-time content creators take a hit, too

Roughly 170 million Americans – about half of the country’s population – use TikTok. A small percentage are full-time content creators like Rudd, but the app has also proven to be a lucrative side gig.

Talia Cadet, 35, of Capitol Heights, Maryland, works as a social media and digital media executive but said TikTok is the source of about 15% of her income, allowing her to live more comfortably in a high-cost-of-living metropolitan area.

“When I’m not working, I’m working (on TikTok),” she said.

Cadet ‒ one of eight creators listed as plaintiffs in the case that challenged the federal TikTok ban ‒ said she's on other apps, but TikTok is her platform of choice. She has more than 160,000 people following her posts on topics like the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, books and Black-owned businesses.

“That’s where I thrive as a creator. That’s where my largest audience is,” she said. “TikTok is unique in its search capabilities and its algorithm and how it has allowed creators to show up as their truest, most raw, authentic self.”

Megan Diem Easton, a creator based near Nashville with over 80,000 followers, has been using TikTok as a side gig since 2022, posting about wedding planning, color analysis and more. The money wasn’t enough to live off, but she said it helped pay off her car and student loans and worry less about her account balance.

Then, in December, Diem Easton said she was laid off from her marketing job, leaving TikTok as her only source of income. Now, she fears TikTok is going away, too.

“I did all this hard for four years, and almost in a way created a business from the ground up, and it’s being taken away through no fault of my own,” Diem Easton, 25, said. “It feels very similar to being laid off from a job.”

Impact on small businesses: 'I am already grieving'

Paulina Hoong, 29, said her small business, Menmin Made, has seen significant growth thanks to TikTok.

Posts on her Asian American and Pacific Islander-inspired prints, home goods and apparel have earned her more than 45,000 followers on Instagram and another 19,000 on TikTok, fueling enough interest for Hoong to run her art business full-time since 2022.

Business comes in waves, but she said the boost from social media took her “from struggling to more comfortable,” with a “significant portion” of sales stemming from TikTok.

Hoong encouraged her TikTok followers to find her on other platforms and follow her newsletter, but she worries sales will drop once TikTok is gone.

“I am already grieving the loss of TikTok. It felt very emotional for me this week,” she said. “Not only has TikTok helped out my business, but it has helped me develop into the person who I am today through getting exposure to so many different opinions, from different cultures.”

TikTok estimates small businesses are poised to lose over $1 billion in just one month if the app is shuttered.

A 'stressful' time for creators

Jessica Fennen, 30, runs an animal sanctuary with nearly 80 reptiles, amphibians, and fish – many of which have physical or neurological disabilities. She says it wouldn’t have been possible without platforms like TikTok.

While Fennen has been posting online since 2015 and has been a full-time content creator since 2020, her income started to pick up in 2022, when TikTok videos featuring her frogs routinely went viral. Much of that money has gone back to the sanctuary, where Fennen has taken in more rescues and is working on renovating a home in Michigan to better accommodate the animals.

“TikTok is really where I found the biggest audience and the most financial success,” she said. "The entirety of the renovations have cost me thousands of dollars and have exclusively come from TikTok.”

With her 235,000 TikTok followers potentially going away, Fennen worries she’s bitten off more than she can chew. Not only is one of her main sources of income disappearing, but TikTok’s editing software – which was the starting point for posts on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms – is leaving with it.

“(If I have to) get a regular job again, that will change the amount of hours that I have to work with the reptiles,” she said. And after expanding the sanctuary, “I have more animals and more responsibilities. More vet bills. More food costs. And so not having a source of income (through TikTok), it has been seriously stressful.”

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Where will TikTok creators go next?

With TikTok’s ban looming, creators are left scrambling to figure out their next steps.

Yes, there are other platforms – Rudd, for instance, has a podcast, a Substack, 10,000 YouTube subscribers, and more than 130,000 Instagram followers –but he said they all pale in comparison to TikTok as revenue streams. The app's creator fund and brand deals supply roughly 90% of Rudd’s income.

“I hope I can continue to make a living doing this without TikTok,” Rudd said. “I don’t, at this moment, see it that way, but hopefully that’s the case. But I don’t have any detailed plan of action. I’ll continue to talk about movies just because I love movies, and if anybody listens, that’s up to them.”

Cora Lakey, 30, a full-time creator since October with more than 103,000 followers on TikTok, said 70% of her income comes from the app’s creator fund, which pays eligible users based on their videos' performance. Money from Instagram and YouTube, where Lakey has a combined 27,500-plus followers, has yet to compare.

“If I make $100 on YouTube Shorts, I’ll make over $1,000 on TikTok,” she said. “That’s why I’m worried about TikTok. They compensate creators fairly for our output."

Lakey has been exploring alternative apps.  She joined RedNote, a Chinese app that has taken off as a potential TikTok alternative, and said she would consider rejoining corporate America if TikTok does go dark.

“The largest platforms are YouTube and Instagram, so I think I’m just going to make it my 5-to-9 after my 9-to-5 to be successful on (Instagram) Reels,” she said. “But there's no copying TikTok. It’s the best, and people are upset for a reason.”

Cornell's Duffy warned that it would be a challenge for creators to pack up and launch their careers on a separate platform if TikTok goes dark. She pointed to Vine, another short-form video app that shut down in 2017, upending some creators’ careers.

"People have spent not just years building a community on this platform, but learning how it works and trying to figure out how to maximize visibility, how to grow their followers, what this culture looks like,” Duffy said. “It’s a job. For many, it’s a 24/7 job.”

Lavelle Dunn, an LA-based creator with more than 730,000 followers, has been a full-time content creator since 2023. Money from the TikTok creator fund has been a steady, reliable source of income the past year, he said, while other platforms have failed to compete.

“I’m on Instagram, of course, and I’m starting to get onto YouTube, but I make zero from those other platforms,” he said. “This is a very scary time for me.”

The app's future isn't clear, even with the ban upheld. President Joe Biden has said he won't enforce the ban, and President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to save the app. On Friday, Trump said he would make a decision on the app "in the not-too-distant future."

"The next phase of this effort – implementing and ensuring compliance with the law after it goes into effect on January 19 – will be a process that plays out over time," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Friday.

Dunn, 30, is holding out hope that TikTok will survive, but he has ideas on where to go next if the app does go dark. YouTube will likely get more of his attention, he said, and while he’s not impressed with Meta’s decision to cancel its diversity, equity and inclusion program, he said it’s too big of a platform to ignore.

But “TikTok is in its own lane. There is no comparison with this app just because of that algorithm,” he said. “I just want to continue to fight until the end, keep everyone (with) a happy face. And if doesn't work out how it should, I’m confident we all will continue to shift and find other ways to keep a roof over our heads.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: TikTok content creators face uncertain future as ban looms