TIK…TIK…BOOM
If someone ever makes a Library of Alexandria for TikToks, I would put this one in it.
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There is a famous line in Anna Karenina that begins “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The same could be said for social media platforms. Over the past twelve months, we’ve begun to see the channels we’ve used day-in, day-out for years begin to erode and wash away. Facebook is now a legacy channel, primarily used by boomers (if you’re reading this and you’re under 35, when was the last time you posted anything there?) Twitter is eating itself. Instagram isn’t quite sure if it wants to be the new YouTube or the new TikTok and TikTok itself is a hair’s breadth away from being banned in the USA.
Earlier this week, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that gave TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, two choices - sell it within six months, or pull out of the USA altogether. Their reasoning is that TikTok presents a security threat due to it being Chinese-owned. Joe Biden has already said that if the bill gets passed in the Senate, he will sign it into law. If you’re thinking that this all sounds like some weird sinophobic, neo-cold-war nonsense, you would be right!
It always makes me laugh when people talk about TikTok’s owners being “bad actors”. They are undoubtedly involved in some shady shit, but that applies to literally everyone who owns one of these platforms. If you think that Mark Zuckerberg is some kind of altruist, then I recommend immediately seeking medical advice. Around ten years ago, I was invited to a meeting at Facebook where they showed on a big screen some of the data they held on their users. The level of granular detail it possessed was terrifying. And it’s not just Meta either. Earlier this week, Twitter announced that you would be able to make audio and video calls within the app, which would reveal your IP address. If Elon Musk had his way, he’d implant one of his brain chips in every poor bozo who still uses “X”. So, let’s not be naive enough to think that if ByteDance did manage to sell TikTok, it would fall into the hands of a patriotic American with noble intentions.
While TikTok being banned in the USA would be bad for creators, record companies (while Universal may have pulled all of their music from the platform, there are still numerous other labels using it to promote their artists) and men who like to eat the world’s spiciest chicken wings while reciting love poetry, you have to wonder if TikTok are all that bothered. There’s a risk that they just call the government’s bluff and decide to withdraw from the market anyway. Even if the bill doesn’t pass in the Senate, it’s set a precedent for weird people who don’t understand how this technology works. If lawmakers - who have very likely never used TikTok - believe that the nation’s youth are all installing Chinese spyware on their phones, they’re going to try really, really hard to grab that technology for themselves.
For the past few years, TikTok has made a reputation for itself as a platform where you can build a very big following for not a lot of cash. With Meta, there are always conversations about decreasing engagement and reach, but you can get a lot of eyeballs on your TikToks very easily. You don’t even have to make them separately either - you can just reuse content you’ve created for IG Reels and vice versa (think about all the stuff you’ve seen on Instagram recently with a TikTok watermark slapped on it).
A TikTok ban wouldn’t just be bad for business (and, potentially, political relations between the USA and China), it would be bad for social media as we know it in 2024. While it’s arguable that the internet as we know it is entering into a new, more fractured and less sociable era, it sets a worrying precedent for government interference into the apps we use to connect us with the wider world. Recently, a lot of news I’ve received regarding the situation in Palestine has come through on-the-ground creators on TikTok. It’s not just a silly little platform full of people dancing. While it definitely deserves scrutiny, a ban is not the answer to the bigger question about the role it - and all social media - plays in our lives.
JOBS BOARD
Freelance: Sumo have a role available for a freelance Social Media Manager
Freelance: Warner Brothers are advertising for freelance Digital Editors to help them out with their coverage of the Paris Olympics
FTC: AA are looking for a Social Media Executive to work with them for twelve months
Full Time: The Samartians are recruiting a Social Media Manager
Full Time: We Are Social need a Content Creator
INTERESTING THING OF THE WEEK: WHAT’S THE PRICE OF A CHILDHOOD TURNED INTO SOCIAL CONTENT?
I find the existence of ‘child influencers’ genuinely disturbing for a number of reasons, not least because these kids and their earnings are not protected in law. In Cosmopolitan, Fortesa Latifi spoke to creators - and a former child influencer - to get their perspectives on why they create this kind of content and the effects it has on the kids who create it.
I’d also recommend listening to Fortesa interviewed about this piece on the ICYMI podcast which provides some more detail. Some of the details in it are pretty harrowing, so listener discretion is advised.
IN THE NEWS
Instagram is experimenting with a way to add files to DMs (Social Media Today)
Instagram is also experimenting with more frames within carousel posts (Social Media Today)
Reddit has announced “free form ads”, which are designed to look like organic Reddit posts, with a small disclaimer in place of a username (Reddit)
Threads now lets all users save drafts and take photos within the app (TechCrunch)
TikTok is developing a new Instagram-like ‘TikTok Photos’ app (9to5 Google)
THINGS I LIKE
What if we kissed…at the Tom Verlaine book sale? (London Review of Books)
Why does the interior of every new build look so dated? (Curbed)
An incredible Instagram carousel of an American shopping mall in the 1980s (The New Yorker)
How do we survive the media apocalypse? (Search Engine)
I cannot wait to get my hands on Anna Jones’s new cookbook, but until I do, I will satiate myself with her delicious Lime and Chipotle Black Bean Tacos (Anna Jones)
A GOOD TIKTOK
Ramadan Mubarak to all my Muslim followers.
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