HOUSTON – The prospect of a TikTok ban seems more imminent after lawmakers Tuesday night voted overwhelmingly to shut down the popular app.
EXPLAINER: U.S. banning TikTok? Your key questions answered
This has not stopped social media influencers nationwide are hoping lawmakers will reconsider. The bill was passed Tuesday night 79-18 with the support of most Senate Republicans and nearly all Senate Democrats. According to NBC, the new legislation provides nine months for TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States.
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This has not stopped social media influencers, like Dr. Trevor Boffone, of Bellaire, who was one of many influencers traveled who to Washington D.C. to urge their representatives of the consequences of a potential ban saying it could impact their livelihood.
Last month, we introduced you to Dr. Boffone when he spoke with KPRC 2′s Bill Spencer saying, “There are over 7 million small businesses in the United States who rely on TikTok, many of these rely on TikTok for the bulk of their income; this is where their livelihoods are based.”
Additionally, Dr. Boffone noted how a TikTok ban not only affects individual influencers, according to Dr. Boffone, but the platform impacts communities as a whole.
“This is a really important space to bring people together, also to talk about social justice issues as well,” he added. “TikTok isn’t just a place for silly dance challenges and, funny content. There’s actually really important education and world-building happening here.”
With a myriad of social media platforms to choose from, it certainly begs the question what makes TikTok so special?
“TikTok really is known for a community building app,” Dr. Boffone explained. “The way that TikTok works with the algorithm, it finds you and it gives you the content that you are interested in. So you can really find a community of, say, Houston Astros fans or Rodeo fans in a way that’s really difficult on, say, Twitter or Facebook.”
As for the discussion of national security, Dr. Boffone, who traveled to D.C. in March says he and other influencers do take it seriously but are asking lawmakers to be included in those conversations.
“We all think this is an issue, and we all think that this is something that’s affecting social media platforms across the board,” he said. “What we would like to see is for our lawmakers to really listen to us and listen to people that use these platforms to try to come up with comprehensive policy that looks at social media across the board.
“A lot of the things that they’re saying that TikTok does, we already know that Meta does,” Dr. Boffone continued. “And we’ve seen the way that Twitter works and so on and so forth. And so I think we just want more transparency and we want more honest conversations.”