Threat of TikTok ban has creators scrambling to build followings on Instagram, YouTube
Chad Spangler filming a video.
Courtesy: Chad Spangler
As TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced hours of grueling questioning from members of Congress in late March, small business owner Chad Spangler watched in frustration.
The bipartisan congressional committee was exploring how TikTok, the massively popular short-form video app owned by China’s ByteDance, could pose a potential privacy and security threat to U.S. consumers.
Representatives grilled Chew about the app’s addictive features, possibly dangerous posts and whether U.S. user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government. Politicians have been threatening a nationwide TikTok ban unless ByteDance sells its stake in the app, a move China said it “strongly” opposed.
But that’s not the only source of dissent. Creators such as Spangler, who sells his artwork online, are worried about their livelihood.
TikTok has emerged as a major piece of the so-called creator economy, which has swelled past $100 billion annually, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. Creators have formed lucrative partnerships with brands, and small business owners such as Spangler use the sizable audiences they’ve built on TikTok to promote their work and drive traffic to their websites.
“That’s the power of TikTok,” Spangler said, adding that the app drives the majority of sales for his business, The Good Chad. “They’ve captured the lightning in the bottle that other platforms just haven’t been able to do yet.”
Spangler has more than 200,000 followers on TikTok, and his business brought in over $100,000 last year, largely because of his reach there. Influencer Marketing Hub’s data shows that the average annual income for an influencer in the U.S. was over $108,000, as of 2021.
TikTok has been on a meteoric rise in the U.S., capturing an increasing amount of consumer attention from people who used to spend more time on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. In 2021, TikTok topped a billion monthly users. An August Pew Research Center survey found that 67% of teens in the U.S. use TikTok and 16% said they are on it almost constantly.
Advertisers are following eyeballs. According to Insider Intelligence, TikTok now controls 2.3% of the worldwide digital ad market, putting it behind only Google, including YouTube; Facebook, including Instagram; Amazon, and Alibaba.
But with Congress bearing down on TikTok, the app’s role in the future of U.S. social media is shaky, as is the sustainability of businesses that have come to rely on it.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms,” on Capitol Hill, March 23, 2023, in Washington, DC.
Olivier Douliery | Afp | Getty Images
In April, Montana legislators approved a bill that would ban TikTok from being offered in the state starting next year. TikTok said it opposes the bill, and claims there’s no clear way for the state to enforce it.
Congress has already banned the app on government devices, and some U.S. officials are trying to forbid its use altogether unless ByteDance divests.
ByteDance did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The White House also threw its support behind a bipartisan Senate bill in March called the RESTRICT Act, which would give the Biden administration the power to ban platforms such as TikTok. But following significant pushback, momentum behind the bill has slowed dramatically.
As the debate gains steam, creators are in a state of limbo.
Creators are turning to other platforms
Vivian Tu, who lives in Miami, has been preparing for a possible TikTok ban by working to build her audience and diversify her content across multiple platforms.
She began posting on TikTok in 2021 as a fun way to help answer co-workers’ questions about finance and investing. By the end of her first week on the platform, she had more than 100,000 followers. Last year, she left behind a career on Wall Street and in tech media to pursue content creation full time.
Tu shares videos in an effort to serve as a friendly face for financial expertise. Aside from posting on TikTok, she uses Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, and she also runs a podcast and a weekly newsletter.
Tu said she began building out her presence on multiple platforms before a potential TikTok ban entered the equation, and she’s hoping she spread out her income sources enough to be OK if anything happens. But she called her work on TikTok, where she has more than 2.4 million followers, her “pride and joy.”
“It would be a huge letdown to see the app get banned,” she told CNBC in an interview.
The top social media companies in the U.S. are preparing to try to fill the vacuum.
Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, has been pumping money into its TikTok copycat, called Reels. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company’s earnings call last month that users are resharing videos over 2 billion times a day, a number that’s doubled in the past six months, adding “we believe that we’re gaining share in short-form video.”
Snap and YouTube have been pouring billions of dollars into their own short-video features to compete with TikTok.
Tu said she expects there will be a “massive exodus” of creators that flock to other platforms if TikTok is banned, but that the app is hard to beat when it comes to discovering new and relevant content.
“That’s why someone like myself, who didn’t have a single follower, didn’t have a single video, could make a video and have the very first one get 3 million views,” she said. “That really doesn’t happen anywhere else.”
Emily Foster with her stuffed animals.
Source: Emily Foster
Emily Foster, a small business owner, agrees. She said other media platforms can’t come close to offering the type of exposure she gets from TikTok.
Foster designs stuffed animals that she sells through her Etsy shop and her website called Alpacasews. She said she started sewing the plushies by hand as gifts for her friends and on commission. But when a video of a dragon she made during the pandemic received 1,000 views on TikTok — a number that’s tiny for her these days — she said it gave her the confidence to open an Etsy shop.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, this could be something,'” she told CNBC.
Foster’s designs quickly gained traction on TikTok, where she now has more than 250,000 followers. She recently shared a behind-the-scenes video that showed her packaging up an order for someone who ordered one of every stuffed animal in her Etsy shop. The video quickly amassed more than 500,000 views, and her entire inventory sold out within a day.
‘Audience just isn’t there’
Demand for Foster’s stuffies soon outpaced her ability to make them by hand, so she turned to crowdfunding site Kickstarter to raise money to cover manufacturing costs. She raised over $100,000 in her most recent Kickstarter campaign, which came after three of her videos went viral on TikTok.
“My business would never be where it is today without TikTok,” she said.
With the looming threat of a TikTok ban, Foster said she’s been sharing content across Instagram, YouTube and Twitter to try to expand her following. At this point, she said, her business would probably survive if TikTok goes away, but it would be difficult.
“The audience just isn’t there, especially for smaller creators,” she said.
Beyond the money, Foster is concerned about losing the following she’s worked so hard to build. She said she’s met “fantastic” friends, artists and other small business owners on the platform.
“You’re never quite alone. It means a lot,” she said. “I’m stressed about potentially losing sales, potentially losing customers, but it’s more so just losing a community that’ll break my heart.”
For Spangler, the artist, the debate surrounding TikTok is maddening not just because of what it could mean for his livelihood, but because it seems to him that lawmakers are ill-informed about what the app does.
Spangler recalled one Republican congressman asking Chew in his testimony about whether TikTok connects to a user’s home Wi-Fi network.
“If you even have a working knowledge of anything technology related, if you watched those hearings, it was just very embarrassing,” Spangler said. “What’s extra frustrating is it feels like this is being potentially taken away from me by people who have no idea how any of this works.”
Spangler channeled his anger into his artwork. After the hearing, he designed a T-shirt featuring a zombie-like congressman with the phrase, “Does the TikTak use a Wi-Fi?”
He shared a video about it on TikTok and made almost $2,500 from T-shirt sales in less than two days.
WATCH: TikTok’s regulatory scrutiny may be a tailwind for Meta
A Xiaomi store in Shanghai, China, on March 16, 2025.
Qilai Shen/Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Chinese electric carmakers Xiaomi, Xpeng and Leapmotor each delivered nearly 30,000 or more cars in March, roughly twice several of their fellow startup competitors.
It’s a sign of how some automakers are pulling ahead, while BYD remains the market leader by far.
Xiaomi delivered a record number of electric vehicles in March, exceeding 29,000 units, the company announced on social media. That topped its prior run of delivering more than 20,000 vehicles in each of the past five months.
The SU7, Xiaomi’s flagship model, was involved in a crash on a highway on Tuesday that left three dead. The automaker on Tuesday afternoon released a statement on Chinese social media that the vehicle was in navigation on autopilot mode before the accident.
Based on preliminary information, the road was obstructed because of construction. The driver took control of the car but collided with construction infrastructure. Xiaomi added in the release that investigations were underway.
That came two weeks after the automaker announced on March 18 its goal to deliver 350,000 vehicles this year. There are also talks of the automaker expanding its second EV factory in Beijing to meet demand, Bloomberg reported on March 18. Xiaomi did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Its competitor Xpeng in March delivered 33,205 vehicles, the fifth consecutive month it has delivered over 30,000 units per month and reflecting a 268% surge in deliveries from the same month last year. March is also the fifth consecutive month the company has delivered over 15,000 units of the Mona M03.
Leapmotor delivered 37,095 vehicles, reflecting a 154% year-over-year growth. The Stellantis-owned automaker last month launched U.K. sales of two electric vehicle models, the T03 and the C10.
Li Auto delivered 36,674 vehicles in March, a 26.5% year-over-year increase, but fewer than every month in the second half of 2024. The company’s cars had gained early traction with Chinese consumers since most come with a fuel tank for charging the vehicle’s battery, reducing anxiety about driving range.
BYD sold 371,419 passenger vehicles in March, reflecting a year-over-year growth of 57.9%. Its overseas sales volume also hit a record high of 72,723 units in March.
In the same month, the automaker unveiled its “Super e-Platform” technology, which boasts 400 kilometers (roughly 249 miles) of range with five minutes of charging. The company in February also announced that it was integrating DeepSeek artificial intelligence to develop “DiPilot,” its advanced driver-assistance system.
Across the board, major companies across China’s electric car industry reported deliveries rose last month, indicating a pick-up in demand from the seasonally soft first two months of the year.
U.S. automaker Tesla sold 78,828 electric vehicles in China in March, marking a 11.5% year-over-year decline in growth.
Other Chinese carmakers saw growth in deliveries but some still struggled to break through the 20,000-unit mark.
Nio delivered 15,039 vehicles, a 26.7% year-over-year growth, but well below the number of cars delivered in the months of May to December last year. Nio-owned Onvo, which markets its electric vehicles as family-oriented, in March recorded 15,039 units in deliveries.
Geely-owned Zeekr delivered 15,422 vehicles in March, increasing by 18.5% year over year. The company last month announced its rollout of free advanced driver-assistance technology to local customers in a bid to compete in the market.
Aito, as of April 2, has not published its delivery numbers for March. The automaker, which uses Huawei tech in its vehicles, on social media had reported monthly deliveries of 34,987 and 21,517 in January and February, respectively.
Quarterly performance
On a first-quarter basis, BYD remained in the lead with 986,098 vehicles sold. The automaker, which overtook Tesla in annual sales last year, surpassed the U.S. EV giant in battery electric vehicles sales this quarter.
Tesla sold 172,754 vehicles in China in the first quarter this year, according to monthly delivery numbers published by the China Passenger Car Association.
Xpeng also reported strong growth, with a total of 94,008 vehicles delivered in the quarter ending in March, reflecting a 331% year-over-year growth.
Leapmotor saw quarterly deliveries more than double to 87,552 units from 33,410 units the same period in 2024, according to publicly available numbers the company published.
However, Li Auto and Nio reported weaker growth than their competitors in the first quarter of the year.
Nio saw 42,094 vehicles delivered in the three months ended March 2025, an increase of 40.1% year over year. Li Auto saw a slower year-over-year growth of 15.5%, with a total of 92,864 vehicles delivered.
A driver for an independent contractor to FedEx delivers packages on Cyber Monday in New York, US, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2023.
Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order shutting the de minimis trade loophole, effective May 2.
Trump in February abruptly ended the de minimis trade exemption, which allows shipments worth less than $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free. The order overwhelmed U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees and caused the U.S. Postal Service to temporarily halt packages from China and Hong Kong. Within days of its announcement, Trump reversed course and delayed the cancellation of the provision.
Wednesday’s announcement, which came alongside a set of sweeping new tariffs, gives customs officials, retailers and logistics companies more time to prepare. Goods that qualify under the de minimis exemption will be subject to a duty of either 30% of their value, or $25 per item. That rate will increase to $50 per item on June 1, the White House said.
Use of the de minimis provision has exploded in recent years as shoppers flock to Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein, which offer ultra-low cost apparel, electronics and other items. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024, up from over 1 billion shipments in 2023.
Critics of the provision say it provides an unfair advantage to Chinese e-commerce companies and creates an influx of packages that are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising concerns around counterfeit and unsafe goods.
The Trump administration has sought to close the loophole over concerns that it facilitates shipments of fentanyl and other illicit substances on the claims that the packages are less likely to be inspected by customs agents.
Temu and Shein have taken steps to grow their operations in the U.S. as the de minimis loophole has come under greater scrutiny. After onboarding sellers with inventory in U.S. warehouses, Temu recently began steering shoppers to those items on its website, allowing it to speed up deliveries. Shein opened distribution centers in states including Illinois and California in 2022, and a supply chain hub in Seattle last year.
WATCH: President Trump signs executive orders for reciprocal tariffs
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