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Newsletter #62: Will TikTok Survive?
| Case Studies | TikTok Mastery |
Reading Time: 3 min
Readability: Grade 2 (Ever feel like you’re overqualified for preschool? Me neither.)
The weekly newsletter that's more elusive than TikTok ... We're your secret VPN! 🕵️♂️
No articles today as are covering just one thing…..
Will TikTok be banned? How it affects you
Will TikTok be banned?
They tried in the past….. failed
September 2020; the US government tried to ban TikTok….. they failed.
July 2021; the Biden administration tried to ban TikTok….. they failed.
Judge Nichols found that the government's interest was insufficient to warrant a full ban of TikTok.
Why do they want to ban TikTok?
The US government wants to protect American user’s online data and don’t trust a Chinese company with all that data….
However, there’s no irrefutable proof TikTok is using this data. Besides, China can already easily purchase an infinite amount of Americans’ private data from nefarious data brokers.
What’s next?
Even though the bill sailed through the House, Senate will present a whole different set of challenges.
A bunch of senators are against the bill:
“We don’t have only a TikTok problem—we have a Big Tech privacy problem. From Meta to Amazon to Discord, US-owned companies are preying on children & teens for profit. We don’t need to ban TikTok to fix their invasive practices.
And Trump is after Meta as he feels it is a problem with the upcoming elections:
You ban TikTok, Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook, will be a big beneficiary. And I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.”
It’s going to be a long uphill battle to pass the bill….
And when we look at the First Amendment, two out of three teenagers and over 150 million Americans use TikTok. The ban would silence many of their voices while blocking the free spread of information.
Also, the ban would also be extremely difficult to put into practice. Montana tried to ban TikTok last year, but a federal judge ruled against it, citing the First Amendment and free speech.
The ban would be an authoritarian move with terrifying Orwellian vibes. It would make us no different from China, which bans many U.S. social media platforms such as Meta, Google, and YouTube.
TikTok ban would be unconstitutional and possibly xenophobic.
How this effects sellers?
We have time….
If this bill is passed, it will take ages. Giving us time to pivot.
You have two options:
Risk it or wait for the dust to settle
Controversy is great press…. the possible ban could make TikTok even more popular
That would make this the ideal time to push your brand on TikTok
Or you could lose all your ‘brand building’ if the app is banned…. all that time and money wasted
What I think….
First of all…. I am kinda biased as Rankster is a TikTok Agency.
But I lost everything previously when Facebook shutdown our Messenger chatbot….. smile if you remember Seller Chatbot….. so I do not want to see that happen again.
I think of TikTok as the typical ‘Hijackers’ in the Amazon world…. especially the ‘Chinese Hijackers’.
Every Amazon seller has had issues with these types of hijackers and they keep coming back….. they always find a way.
Chinese hijackers always find a way…. TikTok will always find a way (already escaped 2 bans in the US).
‘Cos TikTok is the cockroach that can’t be squashed.
If anything, I am more bullish now on TikTok than I was before. This type of unrest creates more opportunities for smart sellers.
Also, if TikTok is not banned then those sellers that are on the platform now will have a huge head start over every other brand.
TikTok is a risk….. but isn’t selling on Amazon also a risk?
That's it for this week 👊 just wanted to clear the air.
Thanks for reading.
- Paul
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