Mississippi content creators concerned about looming TikTok ban
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – Mississippi Candle Company founder Jessica Simon says the other social platforms don’t bring in the same kind of business as TikTok.
“I truly hope that that this is not the end,” she said Friday.
TikTok Shop has allowed her business to grow enough to build a warehouse and hire staff outside family members.
“It’s a fear of the unknown,” she admits. “We don’t exactly know what to expect. We all will find out, I guess, on the 19th what happens.”
The looming ban has become a legal issue, with the Supreme Court issuing a unanimous decision Friday morning upholding the ban.
The Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government at Ole Miss School of Law helped us break through the noise.
“The basic idea is Congress can be worried on national security grounds about data collection, and they don’t have to tell a particular story about exactly what the worry… how the worry would be manifested,” explained Christopher Green, Jamie L. Whitten Chair in Law and Government at Ole Miss School of Law. “Allowed to be generally worried about the data concerns.”
Christopher Green notes how the quick decision by the court about the looming ban has put more Americans in tune with the process.
“It is very unusual for something to happen, you know, at the very, very tippy top of the mountain and to come roll all the way down the hill to the lives of young people in a matter of hours.”
Jessie Whittington runs Country Lather Soap Works.
“I built my business on Tiktok,” she described. “So for this app to possibly go away, everything that the good Lord has blessed me with, that we’ve built, it might be going away,” noted Whittington. “And it’s incredibly disheartening.”
Whittington has traveled to Washington twice in an attempt to lobby for saving the app.
“I’m on all the other platforms, but none of them have the reach that TikTok has,” she said.
She says she has other ideas up her sleeve that won’t slow down production because of the looming ban.
“I’m a hold-my-beer kind of gal,” she said. “Ain’t slowing down nothing. I’m gonna keep trucking.”
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