SAN FRANCISCO: Ayman Chaudhary turned her love for reading into a living on TikTok, posting video snippets about books like those banned in schools in ultra-conservative parts of the United States.
Now the online platform she relies on to support her family is poised to be banned in the country in what entrepreneurs using TikTok condemn as an attack on their livelihoods.
“It’s so essential to small businesses and creators; it’s my full-time job,” the 23-year-old Chicago resident told AFP.
“It makes me really worried that I live in a country that would pass bans like these instead of focusing on what’s actually important, like gun control and healthcare and education.”
A new US law put TikTok’s parent, Chinese tech giant ByteDance, on a nine-month deadline to divest the hugely popular video platform or have it banned in the United States.
US lawmakers argued that TikTok can be used by the Chinese government for espionage and propaganda as long as it is owned by ByteDance.
“Everybody who’s involved in deciding whether or not this platform is going to get banned is turning a blind eye to how it’s going to affect all of the small businesses,” said Bilal Rehman of Texas.
His bilalrehmanstudio TikTok account, which playfully promotes his company’s interior design projects, has about 500,000 followers.
“They don’t really understand social media and how it works,” the 24-year-old added.
TikTok has gone from a novelty to a necessity for many US small businesses, according to an Oxford Economics study backed by the platform.
TikTok fuels growth for more than 7 million businesses in the United States, helping generate billions of dollars and supporting more than 224,000 jobs, the study determined.
“It’s become such a huge part of our economy that taking that away is going to be devastating to millions of people,” Rehman said of TikTok.
Chaudhary took to TikTok to share her passion for reading in early 2020 while enduring COVID-19 lockdowns.
“I made a handful of videos and, long story short, one went viral,” Chaudhary said.
Opportunities to make money from sponsors or advertising came as her audience grew, and posting on her aymansbooks TikTok account became a job.
She saw books she extolled snapped up by readers, as she shone attention on titles banned from schools or libraries in parts of the country.
