News by Veronica Zora Kirin
écrit le 25 January 2025, MÀJ le 27 January 2025
25 January 2025
Temps de lecture : 8 minutes
8 min
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The U.S. Government accidentally launched a paradigm shift toward DeSoc

I watched TikTok closely the days before the impending ban. I’m an anthropologist who studies paradigm shifts, and I knew I was witnessing one in real time. One week before the inauguration of President Trump’s second term, the Supreme Court was deliberating on the legality of the American law that would shutter (or force a sale) of the popular video platform. In the final days, the online community was a-bustle — what would happen, and what should we do?
Temps de lecture : 8 minutes

Most paradigm shifts follow the five stages of grief. These five phases, originally described by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969, aim to organise a painful experience for better understanding and communication. Today, it is well-understood that these stages are not linear. That was seen clearly in the days leading to the shuttering of the app.

I had the honour of watching in real time a cultural paradigm shift fueled by the U.S. ban, with far-reaching implications for the future of social media and corporate trust. Only two days after the temporary stay was granted, we live in a new world, though many have not realised it yet. To understand it, we must first take a step back to April 2024.

Denial

For the majority of 2024, TikTok’s community existed in the denial stage of grief. True to its designation, there was little outward belief that the app would actually be banned despite the law that had been passed. Several congress people had committed to fighting the ban, the lower courts hadn’t yet deliberated, and President Biden had an emergency 90-day extension clause he could trigger. Despite TikTok announcing that a sale was out of the question, the community cheered the decision and held hope. Something would surely prevent this obvious overstep on free speech attempted by Congress. 

“No evidence of a security threat was ever presented,” said V Spehar of Under the Desk News as judicial deliberation continued and time moved forward. “The bill was couched in a $10B humanitarian aid budget reconciliation package.” There was no good evidence of the app’s threat. Surely, a resolution would come.

Anger and bargaining

The TikTok community showed little anger as the months rolled on. There was a good deal of incredulity, but with enough hope, the stages of grief (and a paradigm shift) will not take place.

In the final week before the ban, however, the TikTok community began to boil. This is when things got interesting as it relates to a shift, for the dubious circumstances surrounding the ban were ever present in the conversation.

What was impressive was the dexterity in which the community moved between anger and bargaining. “If you can’t follow me on TikTok anymore, please follow me on _____,” was heard over and over as the week before the ban progressed. There was hope that we could still have some kind of community without the app. 

Those first invitations involved a resignation to move to Instagram. Reels suck, and the algorithm on Meta favours ads over connection, but it sort of functions like TikTok. It was logical. Maybe we could make this work. A bargain was being struck. 

No! came the outcry after only a few hours. Do not move to Meta. For it was they that lobbied the U.S. Congress to ban TikTok in the greatest lobby expenditure in U.S. History. Let’s not reward them removing our voices. 

Then, what? Video after video asked this of the community. Where do we go if we don’t trust Meta?

The answer was a resounding election of decentralized social media (or DeSoc). For years, the blockchain community has been touting DeSoc and federated platforms as the new world of data privacy. On DeSoc platforms, one owns 100% of their profile and data. It can’t be tampered with or sold to ad generators. Even better, one can migrate en masse to any other platform in the ‘federation.’

That last point is critical, for the law managing the TikTok ban is not, in fact, aimed at TikTok alone. The law states that any platform with 20% or greater stake owned by a foreign adversary and more than 1M monthly users can be banned. To ban a federated platform, however, only means a forced migration, not the wholesale reboot the TikTok community now faces.

Suddenly, 170M Americans were interested in DeSoc and flooding there en masse. Bluesky saw an 8M user surge; Neptune, not yet launched, capped their waitlist; and a new app titled Skylight (which will be part of the BlueSky federation) rushed to market. They all struggled — despite the ban being scheduled for months, apps like Pixelfed (federated via Mastadon) experienced loading hangs, glitches, and crashes.

Five days before the ban, however, the anger phase reared its head in a fantastic shot of spite aimed right at the heart of the U.S. Congress. The outstanding claim of the law was that the app, which houses all its data on U.S. soil, was a security threat due to a minor Chinese holding (again, hard evidence of a threat was never presented). In a show of herculean distrust in their government, 700,000 TikTok users migrated to Little Red Book, the Chinese version of TikTok, in a single day. Little Red Book (or Xiaohongshu), 100% owned by the CCP, hit #1 in global app stores. This wasn’t a modern Red Scare sweeping the United States — this was a giant middle finger to the attack on free speech hiding behind baseless rationale that TikTok is a security threat.

Depression

I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning in Berlin on January 19th to watch TikTok as the seconds brought it closer to shut down. It was heartbreaking, not because I was an expat who would lose a lifeline to the United States (which I was); not because I would lose an entertainment platform or saved content (which I would); not even because I couldn’t find all the creators I wanted to follow elsewhere.

What was heartbreaking was the messages posted in real time to my feed. Messages of thanks, like that of Nimay Ndolo and Sidney Raz who shared that they never thought they would make a living from content creation; or that of Piper CJ who was able to land a book deal thanks to her following. Messages of hope, like that from V at Under The Desk News, who continued to remind us that we can do anything if we stick together. Messages of fear, for how would we see what the news doesn’t show us? Messages of concern: TikTok was directly responsible for the largest fundraises for the LA fires and Asheville flooding. 

One creator put it succinctly: They are closing the town hall. A third place. Now where will we gather?

When I woke up on the morning of the ban, I was shocked to find this notification on my phone:

The U.S. Government accidentally launched a paradigm shift toward DeSoc

I immediately turned to Reddit to hear the community and understand why I, an expat in Germany, was also banned. Turns out I wasn’t the only one — I spoke with many folks who had never even set foot in the United States yet were banned. Users in Dubai, The Netherlands, the UK, and New Zealand all woke to the above notification.

Reddit read like mass confusion: What do I do? How do I see you all again? Things seem eerily quiet. We don’t know what’s going on. 

It wasn’t about getting a social media fix; what TikTok provided was real-time information that curated streaming platforms simply could not offer.

The conversation 170M people were in the middle of was over.

Acceptance

The U.S. Government accidentally launched a paradigm shift toward DeSoc

Twelve hours after the ban, TikTok was revived. A similar message was found on our screens:

So has the community on TikTok found acceptance of the impending ban after the 90-day stay ends? Or have we backslid to denial?

It’s a bit of both. Many of us have resumed posting. But our numbers on DeSoc are undeniably climbing and the rhetoric on TikTok (and other platforms) remains the same: something is fishy and we don’t like the smell. Be prepared.

What seems apparent is the acceptance that centralized social media (and centralized power) is dangerous. Millennials and GenZ were groomed to accept our content is not our own. Since 9/11, all data is privy to the United States for monitoring. When brought up in conversation, the reply was an overwhelming resignation.

Until this week. TikTokers know they’ve built something special. A town hall. A third place. A congregation of conversation and correspondence. Not to mention the $15B the app has helped generate for small businesses across the United States.

A paradigm shift requires two things: a cultural desire (thrust upon TikTokers by the U.S. Congress) and the means to shift (in this case, decentralized social media). I say game on. The gloves are off and decentralization has gained traction. We on TikTok have 90 days to galvanize on federated platforms that prioritse free discourse and creator income over corporate bottom lines and censorship. DeSoc platforms better get ready. We’re coming.

Veronica Zora Kirin is an anthropologist, entrepreneur, and author who uses her acumen to challenge the status quo. Help her cause trouble @vmkirin across platforms.

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