Video app blocked

US influencers weep bitter tears for TikTok

Numerous influencers were in tears over the TikTok ban in the USA.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/APA/AFP/Chris DELMAS, tiktok.com/@emilyesenn)

The TikTok app has been unavailable to 170 million users in the USA since Sunday. A tough day for many influencers, who flooded the short video app with tear-jerking videos before the shutdown.

The video platform has been switched off since Saturday evening and has disappeared from Apple and Google app stores. Users were previously shown a warning that TikTok could no longer be used for the time being. 

"Income and livelihood" taken away
Many US influencers and TikTok users had already been shocked by the decision of the Supreme Court in Washington to pull the plug on the popular app days earlier. The result: numerous videos in which young people shed tears over the end of their livelihood, but also the opportunity to earn money.

Emily Senn, for example, sobbed to her 358,000 followers that she was so angry that TikTok users were now being deprived of their "income and livelihood". She said she would "never forgive the US government for this and I will never trust you again". 

After all, TikTok has brought her through numerous difficult moments in her life. "Through the pandemic, my job loss, my divorce," she sniffled in her clip. "Through all the crap that's happened to me in the last five years."

Like losing a "family member"
And Emily is clearly not alone in her feelings. A TikTok user with the username vans.inthesand was also unable to hold back his tears before the platform was shut down. According to the young man, it felt like losing "a community, friends" or even "a family member", which is why he just couldn't stop crying.

Because here they had "learned so much - about things we knew nothing about", such as where to go out to eat, or what books to read and movies to watch.

However, influencer Kylie Park, who has almost a million followers on TikTok, explained that it was not her style to "cry on the internet". But she simply wanted to do "something really realistic", "especially because of what I'm going through". 

To those who tell her that making videos for TikTok is not a job, she says: "It's a full-time job. You deliver a service and get paid for it," she lamented. She was simply sad - and "not just because of the money", but also because of "the community" that everyone had built up together. Because that's how TikTok has become her "safe space" over the years.

"Thank you very much, you old bastards"
Influencer Kelsey Pumel, who had 2.7 million TikTok followers, had even more drastic words. "Fuck this country", she scolded in a video and then sent rather unfriendly greetings to the Supreme Court judges: "Thank you very much, you old bastards."

In fact, thousands of Americans lost their jobs on Saturday evening. As the New York Post calculated, there were 224,000 people who earned their living from TikTok videos in 2023. 

Will Trump bring TikTok back?
However, hopes are high that the interruption will only be short-lived. The future US President Donald Trump has already offered TikTok the prospect of an additional three months. However, he will not be sworn in as president until Monday.

"A law banning TikTok has been passed in the US. Unfortunately, this means that you cannot use TikTok for the time being. We are happy that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to allow TikTok again once he takes office. Please stay tuned for updates," a message on the app read. 

TikTok under suspicion of espionage
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance are suspected of espionage due to their close ties to the Chinese government. For this reason, the US Congress passed a law last year with a large bipartisan majority that obliges ByteDance to sell its US business by January 19.

Service providers such as Apple, Alphabet's Google and Oracle face massive fines if they continue to provide their services to TikTok after the ban comes into force.