As U.S. leaders debate a TikTok ban, lawmakers and creators clash over generational and social differences

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The culmination of dozens of national security and data privacy hearings on the congressional floor saw lawmakers meeting this week to discuss the fate of popular app TikTok, facing a potential government ban. Unlike your typical hearing, though, the debate's defense isn't just pushing data or precedent, it's brought to life by the creators themselves, on site in D.C. to tell their stories, create content, and make a point: We're the ones using the app, and we want a say. 

On Wednesday, following a TikTok press conference and meetings with representatives, creator Grace Amaku, known online as @grace_africa, posted a video of herself running through the Capitol Rotunda to a popular TikTok clip from singer Lizzy McAlpine's "Ceilings." "But it's not real! And you don't exist!" the song crooned over her circuit of the historic building. 

Creators joined a press conference outside the Capitol steps before lawmakers would speak on TikTok's fate. Credit: Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images for TikTok

Meanwhile, Aidan Kohn-Murphy — the founder of TikTok-based nonprofit youth advocacy group @GenZForChange — was filming himself as the first person to scream "Twink!" in the domed room. 

Responding to Kohn-Murphy's video, user @CapCorgiTTV wrote, "There is nothing that will convince lawmakers to ban TikTok more than meeting with actual TikTok content creators lmao."

"There is something so difficult for my brain to compute about TikTok infleuncers [sic] doing romanticized videos of the Capitol when I've straight up had a mini breakdown on one of those benches she passed," tweeted Daily Beast politics reporter Ursula Perano, sharing Amaku's TikTok. 

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There’s certainly humor in the juxtaposition of creators recording themselves running through the rotunda with the latest TikTok bedroom pop hit as a soundtrack, or dancing on the building's roof while lawmakers decide the fate of the app, but many of the creators feel passionately about protecting the communities they've formed there.

For them, the question isn't one of geopolitical debate, as mental health advocate and TikTok creator Jorge Alvarez explained. "This is more pressing for people, financially and economically. This is such a critical organizing tool. There is substantial progress being made, regardless of what they're saying. I hope that at some point, they can recognize that there were people here that were trying to put a face to this."

And, of course, posting online is in their nature. Influencers are going to influence, creative people are going to create, advocates are going to advocate.  

It's important that it's not uber-famous creators who are banging pots on the front lawn of the White House. Most of those folks would move through a TikTok ban or sale unscathed, with many having already successfully transitioned off the app into real-world, money-making opportunities and Hollywood gigs. Instead, TikTok has brought creators like Alvarez, Tiffany Yu, Deidre Kelly, and even Amaku and Kohn-Murphy, who represent a different part of the app focused on advocacy, education, and smaller community building. 

At risk, this group of creators contends, is a free platform for marginalized groups to share new perspectives and knowledge, gain confidence in individual advocacy, and even build economic self-sufficiency. 

Yu, a disability advocate who posts videos about anti-ableism and disability-forward career advice, explained the stakes for the disabled community on TikTok. "Disabled people are some of the most socially-isolated and socially-excluded groups out there. It's not only that we feel lonely, it's that systems, infrastructure, or other barriers keep us excluded to keep us feeling lonely," she said.

While Yu has spent the last 25 years of her life battling the isolation and grief associated with a sudden onset disability, and has dedicated her time doing work to bridge these gaps through grassroots and nonprofit advocacy, TikTok has offered a much more expansive tool to reach others like her. It also has opened up new ways for disabled creators to support themselves, in community. 

"We need advocacy plus economic self sufficiency. I think that for a long time, they have felt mutually exclusive," Yu told Mashable. "Becoming a creator, for me, is possibility. Other people haven't given us opportunities, so we're going to create them ourselves."

Yu says people of marginalized groups also need social connections to survive, and the internet has stepped in to provide them. A sense of empathic conversation and intimacy on the app resounded through the conversations with TikTok creators in D.C., who also argue that the kind of organizing and advocacy possibilities on a video-based community app like TikTok don't really exist elsewhere. "It was the easiest app to get started on, and it was the only app where I was seeing conversation and dialogue happening at the time," Alvarez explained of his TikTok beginnings in 2021. 

Creators met with congressional and TikTok representatives, like CEO Shou Zi Chew. Credit: Julian Mackler / BFA.com

"It's been such an important tool in terms of amplifying my own voice, getting myself to the national stage at the White House, having the recognition and the resources now to be able to take my advocacy and do something with it," Alvarez said, "to activate my theory of change, which is very important in the activism and nonprofit world."

Kelly, a sixth grade math teacher whose educational videos have blown up among students and caregivers alike, says she's been able to use her TikTok platform to partner with outside organizations she wouldn't have otherwise had access to — collaboration which achieves wins like free lunches for kids and school resources, and which other educators use to supplement poor funding. "TikTok is another way of pushing your voice further out there," Kelly said. "There are big companies reaching out to content creators. It's a huge platform."

SEE ALSO: TikTok users' favorite moments from the TikTok congressional hearing

Along with fellow creators, Kelly spoke directly to representatives, like newly elected, Gen Z Rep. Maxwell Frost, about the impact TikTok has on her relationship with her students and other education-focused creators. "We are all still trying to educate, not just in our own classrooms, but by using TikTok as a source."

Meanwhile, the wider political dialogue is weighing questions of corporate malfeasance and global data privacy, pegged to the country's political attitude towards TikTok's ownership. Speaking directly to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Thursday's hearing, Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH5) summed up the feelings of many representatives, saying, "Earlier this week you posted TikTok videos asking American users to mobilize in support of your app and oppose the potential U.S. government action to ban TikTok in the U.S. Based on the established relationship between your company and the Chinese Communist Party, it's impossible for me to conclude that the video is any different than the type of propaganda that CCP requires Chinese companies to push on its citizens."

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew addresses platform representatives and creators. Credit: Julian Mackler / BFA.com

On top of concerns about youth safety and data security unprotected by "Big Tech," other representatives pointed out the spread of inaccurate and harmful medical information, graphic content, and the role of social media in mental and emotional health. All of which have fueled a growing wariness toward the app from critics including older generations and industry leaders. 

But many online have pointed out a kind of hypocrisy in the fervor shown by congressional leaders to ban the app, specifically pointing out similar data privacy concerns on other platforms, and the slow move by the Biden Administration to codify other protections for young people, and for people of color. "These folks just aren't on TikTok," Alvarez said. "They don't really understand what the app is beyond entertainment alone."

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Some, including pro-TikTok representatives, also feel like the week's comments are part of underlying xenophobia toward Chinese tech leaders and the app's users. "That xenophobia hasn't really changed. It's just a little bit more covert. It's just evolved," Amaku told Mashable. "It would be amazing if one of the representatives could speak out against xenophobia, because nobody has, and it's so very blatant."

Amaku also explained to Mashable her motivation for posting the rotunda clip during the week's proceedings. "I used that song in particular because it talks about the removal of joy that was once in someone's life. TikTok was a dream for a lot of people, and now with all of these bills, it's like a dream that you're being woken up from." She explained the irony of being toured around an institution built upon slavery, upon the subjugation of non-white, non-male bodies.

"It's me surrounded by all these leaders that, yes, built the United States of America, but also weren't using the most moral, virtuous routes," she said. "And still today, they're controlling our free speech. They're still controlling our progression."

Amaku explained that she joined the group in D.C. to advocate for young people on TikTok who are no longer letting injustice slide, as well as to push back against representatives who don't understand the app. She says that TikTok has become a space where the "non-popular" kids are uplifted, as someone who faced racist and xenophobic bullying herself because of her first-generation, Nigerian American identity. "TikTok is about that expression and letting yourself not be confined by social norms — the flourishing of creativity — so that's why I find it to be my safe place."

Following Thursday's hearing, TikTok representative Brooke Oberwetter issued a statement reflecting on the day: "Shou came prepared to answer questions from Congress, but, unfortunately, the day was dominated by political grandstanding that failed to acknowledge the real solutions already underway through Project Texas or productively address industry-wide issues of youth safety. Also not mentioned today by members of the Committee: the livelihoods of the 5 million businesses on TikTok or the First Amendment implications of banning a platform loved by 150 million Americans."

As government representatives themselves have used TikTok as a way to reach young voices and promote their own initiatives, and as entertainment and commercial industries have turned the app into a generator of content and capital, so too have people come to rely on the app for basic, human necessities — for better or for worse.

Yu says beyond the decision made after this week's hearing, she will be thinking about the second-degree implications of a ban. 

"Will people continue to have support systems that they can turn to? Will you have a place to learn that is outside of your echo chamber? Are we making sure that there is some transition plan available for people who are financially dependent on making content? My hope is that these decisions are made with care, taking our community into account and the things that we've gained from this."

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