- TikTok’s future in the US hangs in the balance
- Substack’s aiming to offer its creators a more secure new platform
- It launched a $20 million fund to bring creators to its platform
TikTok might have narrowly avoided being swept into the past last month, but a question mark still hovers over its future.
That’s why Substack is pivoting into video content to potentially offer a home to video creators, according to its co-founder.
Substack is best known as a newsletter platform, but given TikTok’s future is not guaranteed, it seems it’s looking to poach some of its users.
Read more: TikTok users share reaction to app going dark
This week, it announced that creators can now post video content, which they can monetize, directly through the Substack app.
“There’s going to be a world of people who are much more focused on videos,” Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie told CNBC. “That is a huge world that Substack is only starting to penetrate.”
Indeed, just days after TikTok went offline last month, Substack launched a $20 million fund to lure creators to its platform.
“If TikTok gets banned for political reasons, there’s nothing to do with the work you’ve done, but it really affects your life,” McKenzie said. “The only and surefire guard against that is if you don’t place your audience in the hands of some other volatile system who doesn’t care about what happens to your livelihood.”
He continued: “Video-first creators, people who are mobile oriented, there’s a whole lot of new possibility waiting to be unlocked once they meet this model in the right place.”
What happened to TikTok last month?
The app went dark on 19 January after the Supreme Court upheld a ruling to ban it. The ban could have been avoided if TikTok’s owner ByteDance didn’t sell the app to a non-Chinese company by that day.
The social media app argued in court that the ban was ‘unconstitutional’, although the Supreme Court dismissed this claim. The proposed ban comes from worries from the US government that data from US citizens could be sold to the Chinese government.
However, following his inauguration, Donald Trump gave the app a reprieve, though it didn’t return to app stores for another month.
Could the ban still go ahead?
Trump signed an executive order giving ByteDance an additional 75 days to find a new American owner. This means it will run out on Saturday 5 April 2025.
Read more: Is TikTok actually getting banned?
While it remains to be seen what will happen between now and 5 April, the President has hinted he could potentially grant the app an extension beyond their 75-day limit.
“Well, I have 90 days from about two weeks ago, and I’m sure it can be extended,” said Trump, as per Reuters, “but let’s see. I don’t think you’ll need to.”
There’s also the option to decide to keep the app available to American users.
According to outlets like the BBC, President Trump could allow the same law that impacted the app to remain but instruct the Department of Justice to turn a blind eye.
In effect, this would mean companies like Apple and Google would avoid any punishment for keeping the product on the app stores and allowing US users to download it.
