Washington
For online sensation Erika Thompson, TikTok is the most powerful social media platform to educate her 11 million followers about her life’s passion: bees.
The loss of the platform in the US – made more likely after the Supreme Court upheld a ban that is set to be enacted next week – will be “substantive” financially for Ms Thompson, a Texas beekeeper, but it is also a loss of an educational tool.
“There are a lot of other people on the platform offering educational content or informative content,” she told the BBC. “That’s the biggest loss and that’s what should be focused on, beyond the financial aspect, is the loss that we as a society – the people who use TikTok – will certainly feel.”
Some 170 million Americans use the app and website. Unless its China-based parent company ByteDance sells the platform or intervention comes from the executive branch, the platform is set to go dark in the US on Sunday.
The fate of the social media giant was left in the hands of the US Supreme Court after both Democratic and Republican lawmakers voted to ban the video-sharing app last year, over concerns about its links to the Chinese government and worries about the app being a national security risk.
TikTok has repeatedly stated it does not share information with Beijing.
But users and content creators say the social media platform has grown to become a fixture in society – and has helped regular users capture the limelight with millions of followers. It’s quickly become a preferred social media outlet to some and a key revenue stream for others.
Now they worry what will happen if the ban is not stopped.
The superior platform
Creators who make a living off social media apps told the BBC that TikTok is the superior platform.
That was true for Ms Thomspon whose first TikTok video received more than 50 million views in the first 24 hours after it was posted.
“I have not experienced the same success on other platforms,” she said. “I can post the exact same video on Instagram, for example, and receive not even close to the engagement.”
Ross Smith who shares funny videos with his 98-year-old grandmother to more than 24 million followers on TikTok described it as one of the few platforms where it is easy to become a creator.
On TikTok, he said, “you can find success overnight”.
Other platforms trying to replicate the short-form scroll format featured on TikTok have yet to find success, Mr Smith told the BBC. Ms Thompson agreed.
“I rarely hear of people going viral on Instagram or someone being an Instagram sensation but those are words you hear frequently on TikTok,” Ms Thompson said.
Codey James, a fashion influencer with tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, told the BBC that audiences do not necessarily transfer from one platform to another.
“I know someone who has hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers and maybe only ten thousand Instagram followers,” Mr James told the BBC.
