The United States rebels against TikTok. The US House of Representatives yesterday debated the use and limitation of the social networking site. The session led to a vote that ended with an overwhelming majority in favour of moving forward with a bill to ban the use of TikTok by US citizens.
The Chinese social network, after hearing this news, has issued a statement in which it announced that it will go to court in the event that this regulation ends up passing through the filter of the Upper House. Joe Biden has on numerous occasions expressed his desire to limit the use of this application after declaring it 'a danger to national security', so it is a debate that is not new, as Donald Trump, the previous president, also tried to do so.
This also poses a danger to the way brands communicate, as TikTok has become a very useful channel for connecting with younger generations. The platform is used by more than 150 million Americans and has generated uncertainty and debate among both society and the business ecosystem.
According to specialised advertising and social media portals, in the US, in the last quarter of 2023 alone, brands invested $1.2 billion in advertising on TikTok alone, and in the whole of 2023, the figure is around $4 billion in total. And over the past year alone, the Chinese social network could have generated close to $18 billion in advertising. As Marketing Directo explains, advertisers are preparing contingency plans in case the US ban on TikTok goes ahead. Millions of dollars would be freed up and companies would have to consider which social network to invest them in, and in this race, Meta Youtube and Google would be the main beneficiaries of the TikTok veto.