What's next for TikTok and the creators who rely on it for their income?

After going dark in the U.S. for several hours over the weekend, TikTok is back. The U.S. government had ordered the Chinese-owned app to find an American owner by Jan. 19 or the app would be banned in the country. The bipartisan legislation cited security concerns around the app's data collection.

But on Sunday, then-president elect Trump said he would most likely give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from the ban after he takes office. The social media platform has now restored its service in the U.S.

Today on Commotion, public policy expert Vass Bednar joins Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about what this means for the millions of creators who use TikTok and what to expect in the next 90 days for the app. 

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Can you imagine what might transpire in 90 days?

Vass: One in three people who use TikTok actually would like to not use it, and that's because of how their attention has been hijacked. Only one in four Americans actually opposed the TikTok ban. We got glimmers of what's going to happen. People shifted, but they shifted to a different Chinese-owned social media app, which is fascinating because of the TikTok-ification of these other apps. Meta has become more TikTok-like, but they're having so much trouble getting new users that they're actually making fake ones with AI. So it didn't seem like the decision boosted U.S.-owned social media companies. And I think that's definitely going to be something people keep their eyes on. 

Elamin: It's a particularly striking trend, the idea of, OK, we might not have TikTok, and then you just see this exodus. But the exodus isn't to Reels, which is Instagram's TikTok alternative. It's to RedNote, which is a Chinese-owned app. And I think the joke that was going around is like, "The kids want a Chinese-owned algorithm to help them consume video." That is kind of striking, that that's the place that so many people ended up migrating to. 

Vass: I'm glad you mentioned "joke," though, because there's been a huge undercurrent of silliness to this. It's strange and surreal to think of silliness as a response to a national security threat. But I think the other threat here is the weapon of capturing our attention. So it seemed like there was some relief for some people, maybe the only way to reclaim some of our attention is to have a ban from the app or just send people to a bookstore. 

Elamin: I will say that one of the things that really stuck with me is watching the creators who, while TikTok was down for the 14 hours, were weeping, crying, saying, "Look, this was how I made my money. This was how I interacted with my entire community." I guess that's the part that they're really kind of reacting to. Look, in  Canada right now, on your personal phone and not a government phone because government phones have banned TikTok, it is just another normal day on TikTok. From your vantage point, north of the border, what is the lesson for us here in all of this? 

Vass: I think if we really want to centre creators, we need to think about the role of public policy here. We present creators as being really independent, but they're dependent on the algorithmic management of our attention. So if you felt like you were going to miss your favourite recipe creator or dancer or everything that's going on on TikTok, maybe there are other ways, financial ways, they should be supported by us, too, instead of just with our attention. For me, that's the key takeaway. 

Some creators were saying, "Look, during COVID, I was able to receive some government support. So should partial funding be part of transitioning away from this app?" $100 million, I think, of advertising money was at stake. It will go somewhere else. It will go to other platforms. But let's acknowledge that some people are relying on this, but it doesn't need to be that way.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Vass Bednar produced by Jess Low.