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If you’re finding value in our Creator Economy newsletter, I encourage you to consider subscribing to The Information. It contains exclusive reporting on the most important stories in tech. Save up to $250 on your first year of access. Hello! It’s crunch time for TikTok, and my phone is blowing up with panicked messages from creators, their managers, agencies and ordinary users about what will happen. Before we get into the possibilities, my colleague Catherine has an update about what TikTok is telling advertisers: This week, TikTok started reaching out to advertisers about preparing for a potential “pause” in advertising, telling customers that a ban on the app, scheduled to take effect on Sunday, will be “temporary,” two media buying sources told The Information. Advertisers will still be able to access TikTok’s system for buying ads after a ban takes effect, TikTok told one media buyer, even though they won’t be able to purchase ads that target U.S. users. But advertisers will be able to use the system to buy ads to appear in other countries and access data about previous campaigns, the person said. However, the ban may force Oracle, TikTok’s cloud service provider, to stop hosting its data. So one media buyer said they are confused if they’ll be able to access TikTok’s ad buying system if a ban were to go into effect. For TikTok users in the U.S., it’s clearer: As we reported earlier this week, TikTok plans to shut its app for consumers on Sunday. Two media buyers said they had paused purchases on TikTok through the weekend. One said they are taking the extra precaution of downloading their campaign data in case they can no longer access it. That media buyer said the brand is tabulating their purchases of ads to ensure TikTok bills them correctly in the event of a shutdown. TikTok said it will not bill advertisers for campaigns planned to appear after a ban goes into effect, one buyer said. Brands running campaigns that start before a ban but end after would be billed on a pro-rata basis. TikTok had earlier told advertisers it would return down payments on future campaigns, The Information reported.—Catherine Perloff The Latest—And What May Happen Next Over the past 24 hours, both President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump have reportedly weighed whether they can save the app. On Thursday afternoon, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., pledged to help the incoming Trump administration find a solution. “It’s clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer for TikTok,” Schumer wrote in a social media post. Biden in April signed into law the bipartisan bill that would ban TikTok if it didn’t cut ties with its Chinese parent company ByteDance. Officials indicated to NBC the president may be concerned that a total shutdown of the TikTok app might define his last day in office. Still, don’t expect Biden to swoop in and save the app. He doesn’t seem to have any options to intervene—as White House officials indicated to media outlets on Thursday. Under the law, the president can trigger a one-time, 90-day extension, but Biden would have to certify to Congress—and provide evidence, such as legal agreements—that there is a path for ByteDance to divest TikTok. Proving that between now and Sunday is basically impossible. For months, ByteDance has publicly maintained that it has no interest in selling TikTok, even as buyers including billionaire Frank McCourt and former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick have thrown their hat in the ring. A Biden administration official told The Wall Street Journal that the provisions of the law are clear and the White House doesn’t believe it has authority to delay the ban. The Supreme Court, which last week heard arguments on TikTok’s challenge to the law, has stayed quiet so far. But the justices’ skepticism at the hearing signaled they were unlikely to overturn the law. Then there’s Trump, who will take office a day after the deadline. He’s also mulling his options to save the app, including an executive order once he is president that would suspend enforcement of the law for 60 to 90 days, according to the Washington Post. That isn’t likely to pass muster, according to legal experts. There is also the possibility that Trump’s new attorney general would not enforce the law. But TikTok’s service providers—including Apple, Google and Oracle—might want additional assurances from the Trump administration to continue hosting TikTok. These companies face hefty fines for doing so—and they’d still be breaking a law. The murkiest language in the law is around what qualifies as a divestiture. The bill gives the president more wiggle room to determine if ByteDance has divested TikTok than the stricter requirements of an extension, specifying that any transaction must “result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.” Interestingly, it doesn’t require this to be a financial transaction. So you have to wonder if Project Texas—TikTok’s effort to cordon off U.S. user data—could come into play here. That’s one potential path for Trump to explore. TikTok CEO Shou Chew plans to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday, according to The New York Times. Last month, Chew met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, showing that the two sides are certainly talking. Whether they’ll be able to reach a deal to save the app is a different question.—Kaya Yurieff Here’s what else is going on… U.S. TikTok users have signed up for Chinese social media app RedNote in droves this week, pushing the TikTok alternative to the top of app stores. Chinese regulators aren’t happy about it, my colleagues Qianer and Juro report. The country’s internet watchdog is concerned that the influx of English-language content on RedNote may contain politically sensitive posts that aren’t otherwise allowed on Chinese social media. Read their full story here. Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta Platforms, told staff this week that the company had handled parts of recent changes to its human resources and content moderation policies clumsily, and that it plans to “correct” some of the changes, The Information reported on Thursday. Bob Dylan made a TikTok account, days before the app was scheduled to disappear. A biopic about the folk icon, called “A Complete Unknown,” is currently in movie theaters. Comments on Dylan’s first video pointed out that the clock on the app is ticking. “You’ve got 30 minutes king,” one user joked. Marc D’Amelio, father to two of TikTok’s biggest stars, Charli and Dixie, called banning TikTok “un-American” and a violation of free speech, in an interview with The Times of London. Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I’d love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please pass it forward or they can sign up here: https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/creator-economy | 
