MAGA’s next wave of influencers saved TikTok

The death knell for American TikTok should have been on March 13th, 2024 , when Congress voted on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis to force its parent company to sell the app or face an outright ban.

After the bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden and negotiations with ByteDance dragged on, a ban seemed inevitable.

But months after the law kicked in, Trump sits in the Oval Office , TikTok remains online under Chinese ownership.

@TeamTrump has garnered 2.8 billion views on TikTok , the most of any campaign or politician on the platform.

The MAGA influencer-industrial complex faced an existential crisis when tech companies began clamping down on their accounts.

MAGA social media influencers see TikTok as a relatively stable platform for their work.

Many MAGA creators don’t believe that TikTok labels their political views as hate speech violating its terms of service agreements.

Users feel the algorithm and content moderation policies are somewhat insulated from American political changes.

But given that whoever’s in the White House directly controls whether Google and Apple can keep it on their app stores, that insulation looks threadbare.