A majority of U.S. TikTok creators don’t believe the platform will be banned within a year, and most haven’t seen the brands they work for dropping the app in their marketing budgets, according to a modern survey of people who make money by posting. TikTok content shared exclusively with WIRED.
The results suggest that TikTok’s influencer economy is largely free from existential dread after Congress passed a law last month that threatened the future of the app’s U.S. business. The bill requires TikTok to separate from its Chinese parent company within a year or face a nationwide ban; TikTok is challenging the constitutionality of this measure in court.
Fohr, an influencer marketing platform which connects creators with customers for sponsored content, surveyed U.S. TikTok creators on its platform with at least 10,000 followers. It received 200 responses, half of which came from people for whom influencing is their only source of income. Of respondents, 62 percent said they did not think TikTok would be banned by 2025, while the remaining 38 percent said it would happen.
Some creators may doubt whether a ban will actually happen after seeing the Trump White House and Congress unsuccessfully try to crack down on TikTok several times over the past few years. For now, the platform only has continued to grow more popular in the US, raising alarm in Silicon Valley about the threat posed by the competition. There is also the possibility that TikTok could be sold to a group of US investors – several interested bidders have emerged – although TikTok has made clear that such an acquisition would be virtually impossible.
Some creators simply can’t believe what a bizarre situation their favorite app finds itself in. “I deny it because I think the TikTok ban is absurd,” an anonymous creator told Fohr in their survey. “I think our government has bigger worries than banning a platform where people can express their views and opinions.”
Most creators said they haven’t lost business with brands that pay for marketing content on TikTok since the modern law was signed: 83 percent of influencers who responded said it had no impact on their sponsorships. But the rest saw signs that brands were pulling out of the app or at least diversifying their marketing. About 7 percent said the brand had paused or canceled a campaign they were working on, and 8 percent said the brand had requested or at least inquired about moving the product to a different social media platform.
Companies may be reluctant to move away from TikTok as it has become one of the most popular ways for consumers to discover modern products, especially with small business. Over the past year, TikTok has tried to leverage that influence into a modern revenue stream through an e-commerce feature called TikTok Shop. Above 11 percent U.S. households have made purchases through TikTok Shop since September 2023, according to credit card transaction data released in April by research firm Earnest Analytics.
It doesn’t look like the passage of the divestment bill last month has prompted people to spend significantly less time on TikTok or avoid the app altogether. The platform’s popularity in US app stores continues largely consistent over the past month, according to market research firm Sensor Tower. Fohr found that 60 percent of creators said their video viewership remained the same, 28 percent said they saw it decline, and 10 percent said their engagement increased. These changes could simply be due to routine changes TikTok makes to its algorithm, the variability of content shared by influencers, or the whims of users watching videos.
TikTok’s rise has encouraged US tech giants to imitate many of its features, with Google’s YouTube promoting the Shorts format and Instagram’s Meta launching Reels. Fohr’s survey shows that if creators start leaving TikTok due to uncertainty about the app’s future or a ban, Instagram will benefit the most. The extensive majority of creators – 67 percent – said they saw it as the best alternative to growing their audience, with 22 percent citing YouTube. Only a petite proportion pointed to Snapchat, Pinterest and other platforms.
Several creators, however, said it’s harder to gain popularity on Instagram compared to TikTok, with one noting that the Meta platform doesn’t offer anything equivalent to the TikTok Creativity Program, which pays users based on the number of views and other engagement metrics videos receive.
On social media platforms, the most common way for creators to earn money is to sign contracts with brands to publish posts featuring their products. But Fohr’s survey also showed the growth of a novel monetization program called the TikTok Imaginative Challenge, which the app launched last year. It allows companies to post requests for creators to make marketing videos, which brands can then exploit on their channels. Influencers are compensated based on their video’s performance in terms of views and engagement.
In Fohr’s survey, this type of content, known as UGC, was TikTok’s biggest source of revenue for 18 percent of creators. Whatever happens with TikTok in the U.S., history suggests it may not be long before its U.S. competitors begin rolling out their own user-generated content initiatives.