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TikTok ban would hit many users where it hurts — their pocketbook
For Delyanne Barros a lot depends on the Senate’s upcoming vote on a bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S. unless it splits from Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.
The 41-year-old personal finance and money coach, who built a financial consulting company from the ground up, said a ban of the popular social media app TikTok could potentially wipe out as much as 30% of her business overnight.
Barros, who goes by @delyannethemoneycoach on TikTok, isn’t sure if she’d even be running her own business today were it not for the Chinese-owned app, which faces a potential ban if the proposed legislation, passed by the House on Wednesday, is enacted into law.
“I started my business in January 2020, and went full in on TikTok,” Barros told CBS MoneyWatch. “That’s where a lot of my content started going viral and it catapulted my business. It was an integral part of how I grew it in the beginning,”
TikTok doesn’t pay Barros directly, rather it’s how 20%-30% of her clients find her, and ultimately purchase an investing course she offers. The remainder of her clients seek out her services through other social media apps on which she has a presence, internet searches and by word of mouth. She also makes money through brand-sponsored posts on social media platforms including TikTok.
“A ban would result in me losing a major part of my business. I would definitely feel a hit,” she said.
Barros is not alone. Many of TikTok’s 170 million monthly active U.S. users rely on the app to generate secondary and even primary income streams. Seven million small businesses are also among them, and use the platform to drive growth, according to a joint report from Oxford Economics and TikTok released Wednesday.
Thirty-nine percent of small businesses say that access to TikTok is critical to their businesses’ existence, while another 39% say TikTok has allowed them to generate supplemental or principal incomes through their activity on the app, according to the report. Sixty-nine percent of small businesses say TikTok has led to increased sales in the past year.
Tori Dunlap, founder of a money and career platform, Her First $100K, said TikTok “was absolutely fundamental” to the growth of her business, securing a book deal and launching a podcast. Her viral videos have helped her amass 2.4 million followers on TikTok over four years. Her popularity on the platform has also led to lucrative brand partnerships and new clients of her coaching services.
“TikTok is the top of the funnel in terms of our customer journey. It’s how people discover us,” Dunlap told CBS MoneyWatch.
“Incredibly unfair”
Sophie Beren, founder and CEO of The Conversationalist, an educational platform that empowers young people to have conversations and create community, said that for creators who rely wholly or in part on TikTok for income, a ban would be “devastating.”
“They are struggling with a potential ban because we are living in a world where it’s impossible to have one traditional path for income. The traditional path for young people doesn’t guarantee economic success or stability like it used to,” Beren told CBS MoneyWatch.
She added that the possibility of taking away an income stream from the creator community feels “incredibly unfair.”
Tiffany Yu, founder of Diversability, a for-profit advocacy group and community provider for people with disabilities, is also afraid of what a potential ban would mean for her business and the people it serves and employs.
Yu’s advocacy group makes money selling memberships and through corporate sponsorships. She credits TikTok with growing her reach large enough to secure major brand partnerships, including deals with Hilton and Dove. All told, the deals acquired through TikTok account for more than 50% of Diversability’s revenue.
For Yu, a ban could mean going back to her bootstrapping roots, when she made ends meet by renting part of her apartment and selling used furniture, in the early days of running Diversability.
“I would like to not have to go back there, but if that’s what we had to, then we would do it,” she said.
Safer to diversify, than rely on a single platform
Barros, the money coach, said that while a TikTok ban could hurt her business, it wouldn’t destroy it. That’s because she has never allowed her business to depend entirely on a single platform, whose fate she never had any control over.
“Like any business, you need to diversify, and I use Instagram and Threads and all the other platforms, too,” she said.
But TikTok offers a unique advantage for people like herself, Barros said, because its algorithm is more effective at feeding audiences tailored content that they’re likely to engage with, she believes.
Still, she’s prepared for a potential ban on TikTok and any other social media platform for that matter.
“I use other platforms but I have also been building an email list that I own,” she said. “I feel secure that my business will continue to grow and thrive. If TikTok were to be shut down I would inevitable feel the impact, but it’s not something that would wipe out my business.”
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Ever since Babe Ruth was waddling around the bases, there have been grim predictions about baseball’s future: Time has passed on the national pastime, too leisurely, too bucolic. Last year’s World Series TV ratings, and this season’s batting averages, both hit 50-year lows. Baseball, they say, is dying.
But never mind the current World Series between two of the game’s stalwarts, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Want to feel better about baseball’s health? Just go to a Milwaukee Brewers game.
There, in Major League Baseball’s smallest market, cheese curds sweat under floodlights, frozen custard unspools into batting helmets, hometown Miller flows liberally, and on the stadium’s second level is the most authentic Milwaukee touch of all: the broadcaster they call “Mr. Baseball.”
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In six undistinguished seasons as a catcher in the majors, Bob Uecker never played an inning for the Brewers. But during half a century as the team’s play-by-play announcer, he’s become equal parts mayor and mascot in the city of his birth, all the while declining offers from bigger markets – laying off pitches, as it were.
In the 1980s Yankees owner George Steinbrenner tried to recruit Uecker. “Steinbrenner sent a couple of people out to talk to me about joining the Yankees,” he said, “but I loved Milwaukee. Born and raised here!”
Uecker began his major league career in 1962 with the Milwaukee Braves before the franchise moved to Atlanta. “I was the first player from Milwaukee to ever be signed by the Braves,” he said. “I was also the first Milwaukee native to be sent to the minor leagues by the Braves!”
If Uecker’s on-field inadequacies hampered his playing career, they’ve provided some of his best material in a lengthy and lucrative second career as an actor and comedian. Employing a bone-dry wit, he made more than 40 appearances on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”
He said, “I did ‘Tonight Shows,’ you know, whenever they wanted. I would leave here on a Sunday afternoon, fly to L.A., do the Monday night show, take a red-eye back here, and be here for Tuesday’s game.”
Johnny Carson: “Give me, fast as you can, all the teams you’ve ever played with.”
Uecker: “Braves, Cardinals, Phillies, and the Braves again. Then, in June, I was with …”
The Carson guest spots led to a series of notable TV commercials, as well as a starring sitcom role, and perhaps most memorably as Harry Doyle, the perpetually blitzed announcer in the “Major League” movies. This past summer, at Milwaukee’s American Family Field, “Harry Doyle Bobblehead Night” brought the Uecker faithful out in force.
Asked his favorite “Bob Uecker line,” he replied, “‘Juuuuust a bit outside.’ That’s where my wife put me a lotta times!”
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Before serving 16 years as baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig owned the Brewers, and, in 1971, hired Uecker, misguidedly, as a scout. Selig said it is “legitimately true” that Uecker wasn’t cut out to be a scout. “There were mashed potatoes on the damned scouting report. I couldn’t read it. He couldn’t read it,” he said.
So, Selig moved Uecker to the Brewers’ broadcast booth later that year.
Today there’s even a statue honoring Uecker, where else? In the very last row of the upper deck, behind a pole.
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But for all the stardom, all the gigs and gags, the late-night-laughs at his own expense, Uecker still fancies himself a player, says Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff: “He lets us know about his catching days. He’s one of us. He’s part of the team. And I think that’s why we embrace him so much, is that he’s on this ride with us. And that’s what makes it cool.”
According to Uecker, he has a bond with the players on the field: “I played the game. So, I know how hard it is. I know how tough it is to play this game. The game celebrations, when we win, that’s a big part of it, man, to be able to walk into that clubhouse and be with ’em.”
But baseball is cruel, and in Milwaukee, celebrations are short-lived. Earlier this month, with the Brewers just two outs from winning the National League Wild Card Series, the New York Mets came from behind on a dramatic home run.
On the radio, Uecker didn’t hide the hurt: “I’m tellin’ ya, that one … had some sting on it.”
The Brewers’ first World Series title will have to wait.
There’s speculation that the heartbreaking loss may have marked Uecker’s last game as an announcer. But as his 91st birthday nears, the man they call “Mr. Baseball” told us he doesn’t want to imagine his life without it.
“I don’t know what I would do, you know, with no more. If I think of no more baseball for me, I don’t know what that would be like, you know?” Uecker said. “I got out of high school and I joined the Army. And I signed a baseball contact. That’s been it, really!”
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Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
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