Local TikTokers gathered on Thursday to discuss how the platform has helped their businesses, expressing worry over how a potential ban could affect them.
The TikTok-hosted event took place on April 18 at Sugar Baby Creamery in Atlanta, where four TikTokers gathered to discuss how the platform has helped them grow their businesses. The local TikTokers were Lynda and Paul Truong of @loveandpebble, a skincare company; Glennda Baker (@glenndabaker), a local real estate agent; Josh Wikoff, CEO of @peachtreehearing, an Atlanta audiology practice; and Robert Lucas, also known as @thesweetimpact, a self-taught cake artist and baker.
The small business owners briefly discussed how they became involved with TikTok and the growth that they’ve experienced since they first started. But during a question and answer session at the end of the round table discussion, the TikTokers talked about how their businesses would be impacted should Congress decide to ban the app altogether.
A “divest-or-ban” bill is currently on its way through the U.S. Congress. The bill would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell the app or be completely banned in the United States. According to CBS, the bill was recently attached to an aid package for Ukraine and Israel, and is expected to be voted on in The House of Representatives on Saturday night. A previous version of the bill passed the House, but stalled in the Senate. Attaching the bill to aid for Ukraine and Israel might force a swifter passage of the bill.
The bill stems from concerns over personal user data collected by TikTok and ByteDance and how that might affect national security. During the round table, Suzy Loftus, Head of Trust and Safety for TikTok USDS, said the company has taken steps to address concerns about data.
“We have taken voluntary and unprecedented steps to protect U.S. user data. We have a third party, that’s an American company, where the protected U.S. data is stored in the cloud, a secure environment,” Loftus said. “We’ve taken a number of these steps in light of and to address the concerts that are underlying some of the conversation. We’re hoping, in some ways, that the steps that we’ve taken will be ones that are industry standards to protect data.”
The company that hosts TikTok’s U.S. data is called Oracle, a Texas-based tech company. A recent article in The Verge reports differing perspectives on just how much the company has successfully sequestered U.S. users’ data away from ByteDance. But the TikTokers at the round table were more concerned about how a TikTok ban could effectively end some of their businesses.
Lynda and Paul Truong, owners of a local skincare company called Love & Pebble, said if a ban were to occur, they would either have to diversify – a challenge they think would be incredibly difficult – or shut down.
“I mean, 90% of our sales are on TikTok Shop,” Paul Truong said, referring to TikTok’s marketplace platform. “It would be catastrophic.”
Lynda and Paul said they are doing everything in their power to make sure the bill doesn’t pass, including reaching out to senators and representatives. According to the AJC, all but two of Georgia’s 14 members of the U.S. House – Reps. Nikema Williams, a Democrat, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican – voted in support of the divest-or-ban legislation.
For Lynda and Paul, their community mostly exists on TikTok. On Instagram, the duo has 23.3k followers. On TikTok, they have 137.9K followers, along with roughly 2,000 other creators they partner with.
“The community that we’ve built, we’ve spent so much work building, is there,” Paul said. “This ban would make it go away.”
Glennda Baker, a local real estate agent who joined TikTok in October of 2020, said she thinks there’s a “misconception” that small businesses on TikTok will be able to replicate the same type of growth on other platforms. Even though she’s based in Atlanta, Baker said through TikTok she’s been able to extend her reach nationally, an achievement she doesn’t think would have been possible without the platform. Baker has 878.1k followers on TikTok, but just 178k on Instagram.
“When I hear our legislators say, oh well they can just do that somewhere else – yeah, that’s bullsh*t,” Baker said. “You can’t duplicate it like that.”
Peachtree Hearing, an audiology practice in Marietta, has gained 106.5k followers on TikTok for their earwax and ear impression videos – clearly, there really is a market for everything. Clients include musicians who need their ear equipment molded to their earshape, and even people who visit Atlanta just so their earwax removal procedure can make it on the channel.
You might not think that TikTok would matter much when it comes to an audiology practice, but Peachtree Hearing CEO Josh Wikoff said the company keeps track of how people hear about them, and TikTok comes up more often than you might think.
“Every revenue stream matters to us,” Wikoff said. “We would be losing a revenue stream. We would be losing a referral source, too.”
Robert Lucas, who entertains his three million TikTok followers (only 1.1. million on Instagram) with cake decorating, agreed with sentiments that the audience doesn’t always cross over from platform to platform. He lamented losing his TikTok audience not just for business reasons, but for personal ones as well.
“I get comments saying like – oh, this made my day so much better, or my children love watching [your videos] because it calms them down,” Lucas said. “For that to be something that could be taken away from them, that’s kind of hurtful. That’s really hurtful for me to think about, that they could lose that access to something that they really enjoy.”