And here you thought the music mismanagement was going to be the biggest of your TikTok troubles.
On April the 24th, Biden signed the bill that, amongst other things beyond the scope of this publication (or at least this author), will force TikTok to be sold to an American holder or be forever banished from our shores.
NBC News reports:
“The new legislation provides nine months for TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States. The president can grant a one-time extension of 90 days, bringing the timeline to sell to one year, if he certifies that there’s a path to divestiture and “significant progress” toward executing it.
Even without the extension, the earliest a ban could start is January 2025. With the extension, it would be April. And with TikTok threatening legal action, the matter could get tied up in the courts for even longer.”
Honestly, considering Trump’s attempt to punt the platform panned out poorly, I didn’t think we’d ever actually get here. Yet here we are indeed.
And of course everyone’s asking whether or not TikTok will sell, who to if so, and whether or not this is government overreach.
But for a smaller business, I think a bigger questions might include:
‘Where does this leave other foreign-owned operations doing any business in the US’?
The argument that TikTok is a special case due to its nature as a media platform with unique misinformation spreading abilities is pretty specious, considering the nature of the Internet itself, and the nature of information itself, and the nature of human beings ourselves. If Reddit sold to a Japanese holding company would it be under the same scrutiny? What might this mean for the operations of any overseas companies you manufacture with? Ship with? And how will you weather any fallout?
‘How far ahead do I need to look for alternatives?’
The ban has been in the news for a while, but it has a full year to be enacted, reversed, or depending on how ByteDance feels, mostly irrelevant to your social media operations. At what point do you need to adjust anything if anything?
‘Do I want to seek out a copycat model?’
You don’t have to be an artist to steal like one. Consider how YouTube and Facebook rolled out short video capabilities in specialized isolation after TikTok showed itself to be a real player. And of course all of this was after the untimely death of Vine to begin with.
If TikTok does decide to just totally pull out of the States, your short-form media reserves need not go to waste because the formula has been adjusted for other platforms. Might that be something you want to implement into how you run things or start your business? Give it some thought! You never know how much time you’ll have.
Ti(c)k To(c)k.
