This isn’t the first time a major social media platform has gone under.
In 2017, Vine, a platform where users could share videos of up to six seconds long, shut down.
It was a shock for the creators of that time.
Q Park, a content creator with 37.7 million followers on TikTok, was one of those people.
He had been building a following for years on Vine — the only platform he was using at the time — and when it disappeared, he said, “it felt like my whole business was coming to a halt.”
But in a way it was good for him too. This forced him to learn how to create different content for different audiences.
“This experience has shown me that if you believe in your ability to create content, you will gain fans elsewhere,” Mr Park told the BBC.
With the ban looming, some creators have started flocking to another Chinese platform, RedNote is a competitor to TikTok, popular among young people in China, Taiwan and other Chinese-speaking populations.
Earlier this week, RedNote was the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store in the US.
While some creators are diversifying where they post in hopes of growing audiences elsewhere, others hope the ban doesn’t come to pass.
“TikTok is a beast,” Park said. “Part of me thinks it might be too big to fail.”
“It will be revived somehow, the economy is too big now.”
Additional reporting by Grace Dean and Natalie Jimenez.
