WASHINGTON — TikTok – and some of its users – are pulling out all the stops to contest a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban of the app.
As House lawmakers prepare to vote on the bill Wednesday, TikTok is encouraging users to call their representatives with a full-screen notification about the legislation. The company’s CEO, Shou Chew, has attempted to schedule 11th-hour meetings with members of Congress. It sent letters to two lawmakers on Monday challenging their characterizations of TikTok’s call-to-action campaign as “offensive” and “patently false.”
And TikTok claims that banning the app would harm 5 million businesses that rely on the platform.
One of those businesses belongs to Nadya Okamoto, a TikTok creator with more than 4 million followers and whose brand of menstruation products, August, is carried by national retailers including Target. (TikTok connected Okamoto with CNN.)
Okamoto’s TikTok account features videos on women’s health, sex education and the occasional glimpse into her personal life. She’s launched product collaborations with major brands such as the trendy footwear company Hoka. Her sisters are TikTok creators in their own right, one of whom is using her income from TikTok to pay her own way through college, Okamoto said.
TikTok’s heavy emphasis on the For You page makes it far easier for brands like August to reach new audiences compared to other apps, Okamoto said. “They’re primarily looking at content from people they don’t necessarily follow already. And so, as a business, that is a very unique thing.”
Okamoto, who is Asian-American, also suspects that running beneath the anti-TikTok rhetoric is a strain of fear and racism, echoing many other Asian-Americans who have looked on with growing alarm.
“It feels like, in my gut, whether it’s Chew testifying or just lines of questioning or comments that have been made about why this bill is coming forward, that it is rooted in a lot of xenophobia, with not a lot of evidence behind some of…
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