President Joe Biden Signed a bill Wednesday TikTok may be banned. – This time for real. After so many false starts and stops, some creative economy founders and their clients are rolling their eyes. They have been through this before.

“I think two years ago, it would have been devastating,” Karat Financial co-founder and co-CEO Eric Wei told TechCrunch. “Now… huh.”

When creators succeed, startups operating in the creative economy typically succeed as well. Still, Wei isn't particularly concerned that the ban on Tik Tik will affect his business, a Series B startup that provides financial services to creators.

“If you build products in startups that help creators make money, then actually, from an addressable market perspective, that's good for you,” Wee said. “Your framing might be, 'TikTok is over, as a creator, you need to think about diversifying and supporting yourself, so here are XYZ things you can do.' can do.'”

The threat of a TikTok ban feels a bit like “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” though this time, it's different. It just isn't. Political theater In the form of ongoing Senate hearings. The bill, which would have forced ByteDance to sell Tik Tok if it couldn't find an American buyer within nine months, made its way through the House and Senate to Biden's desk, where he signed it into law.

But the creative landscape looks different now than it did in 2020, when former President Donald Trump was in power. Tried to ban. Chinese-owned app (and, while he's running for president again, he now says he's against a ban, because it would give Meta too much power). Established creators have had nearly three years of legal back-and-forth and two different presidencies to prepare their businesses for a world without TikTok.

As Vee scrolls through a large group chat with other creators, she notes that no one is too nervous.

“I'm watching, and there are some jokes — one guy joked, 'My Snapchat shares are going to pop,' and another said, 'Let's make a joke: when TikTokers protest a TikTok ban. – Who's in it?'” he said. “A third says, 'TikTok is going to be sued, I'm talking to their internal,' and a fourth replies, 'Where's my popcorn?'

This is not the case for all types of creators. Wei noted that TikTok live streamers and creators who monetize through the TikTok Shop could be the most affected, as platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels don't invest in these features as much as TikTok. Banning can also be harmful. Political creatorsSince Instagram Rails isn't a viable alternative to them – the Meta-owned platform has. started limiting The reach of political content and while more established creators in Wei's group chat have been preparing for it for years, off TikTok could be a huge gut punch to new creators who still have a number of No follow on platforms.

“Obviously, nobody's like, 'This is good for us!' V said. But the amount of time the creators had to prepare for the moment has better prepared them for the storm.

“This is something that's been talked about for a long time, so creators are aware of it — it's nothing new,” said Harry Gastner, co-founder and CEO of the creator monetization platform. ” Fanfix, told TechCrunch. Secondly, it is not an overnight ban. Creators still have about a year to move their followers, so I'm optimistic.”

James Jones – KCEO bump intoAnother financial services company — for creators — is seeing a parallel situation.

“The TikTok ban will undoubtedly have a ripple effect in the creative community,” Jones told TechCrunch. “But creators are getting better at diversifying the ways they monetize across multiple platforms. We've seen this happen before with Vine, which has filled the gap for TikTok. Paved the way.

TikTok's secret sauce is its power to help creators get discovered – compared to other platforms, anyone can blow up a page for you. But while Instagram reels and YouTube shorts could be compared to “Kirkland Brand Platforms have matured since “TikTok” in 2021.

In the early days of TikTok Creator Fund, a stable pool of money distributed among a growing number of qualified creators, few were supporting themselves solely on TikTok views. This has changed recently as TikTok has shifted creators to it. Creative program, which offers qualified creators a better deal – but not all creators are making videos that fit the bill for this program. So, to make content creation a stable career, they will have to move to other platforms anyway. YouTube Shorts has started. Advertising revenue sharing On short-form videos, like its long-standing partner program, while Instagram Reels only occasionally, it's unreliable. Bonus program.

Gestetner told TechCrunch that some of the creators he works with have become disillusioned with TikTok anyway.

“The problems with TikTok go beyond the ban,” he said. “Creators often remove their accounts on TikTok, or shadow bans, or get reported, and it's very difficult to get a response from TikTok. So we've had problems there for years.

Not that other platforms don't share these transparency issues. But these risks make it important for creators not to put all their energies into one platform.

“Five years ago, creators were usually on one platform,” he said. “Now, every creator has at least three, and they use five, six or seven platforms.”

This need for diversity goes beyond just the use of platform creators. Creators also need to generate income through various means, whether it's through fan memberships, product sales, live performances or courses.

“I don't think there will be any impact on our business, or possibly a positive impact,” Gastner said. “That helps our case, because creators are skeptical of all the big platforms, and they don't want all of their monetization tied to a particular platform.”

In theory, a ban on TikTok could create room in the market for another short-form video app — perhaps one that isn't owned by a major corporation like Meta or Google. But it likely won't present another situation like what happened when Elon Musk bought Twitter, and several microblogging apps sprung up seemingly overnight.

“I think there's a really good example of that, remember the trailer?” V said. “For a while, we were all excited about it, like 'Oh my God, Tik Tok is coming out, let's put money towards a trailer!' But then everyone realized that TikTok isn't going away. And now it's years later, and does anyone talk about trailers anymore?

Well, they probably won't be talking about the trailer because the company is one. Walk Red flag. In any case, creators won't have the patience to invest in a new platform that might not last, so they'll have to pay with Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. That doesn't mean TikTok won't be missed.

“I think the fans overall will be the most affected,” Gastner said. “But I think the shorts experience and the rails experience are going great.”