TikTok is Coming After TV. Can It Be Stopped? (Should It Be?)

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TikTok is a phenomenon and now a direct competitor for video viewers to everyone from broadcast TV and cable services to Netflix and studio streamers. But what, if anything, can they do to stop the juggernaut?

Stop thinking of TikTok as a social network, for a start. As Vox media analyst Peter Kafka points out, the video-sharing app is “a colossally powerful entertainment app that keeps viewers glued to an endless stream of clips.”

Here are the stats: TikTok says it passed a billion users nearly a year ago, but even that number likely understates its importance, because TikTok users spend a lot of time on TikTok. The company told advertisers its users were spending nearly 90 minutes a day on the app and, crucially, the audience is Gen Z and younger.

Media companies have been telling themselves that your network or service has content people simply can’t find on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram.

But TikTok eviscerates most of those arguments, says Kafka: “It’s a direct competitor for video eyeballs; it’s more compelling than the stuff you’re programming; and, just like a slot machine, it promises viewers that there’s always another dopamine hit just a swipe away.”

Kafka thinks Big Media isn’t doing anything to counter TikTok’s threat because they don’t see the threat coming down the track. Instead, Big Media are treating TikTok as a social media platform by advertising on it or placing teaser clips to entice punters to go to the cinema or subscribe to an SVOD.

“Right now, TikTok really expects media companies to act just like its users — by giving it content it can use to entertain other users,” says Kafka. “Still, it’s not clear if the entertainment companies putting free content on TikTok are helping themselves or helping TikTok.”

An unnamed studio executive told Vox that TikTok is “incredibly effective” at driving awareness for a film — just like a TV ad or a billboard — but says TikTok users are very unlikely to see a clip for a film and then go purchase a ticket. “They just don’t leave,” he said.

On the other hand, Sylvia George, who runs performance marketing for AMC Networks, says TikTok has been a good tool to prompt viewers to sign up for the company’s streaming services, like Shudder or AMC+. “It hasn’t proven to be this tangible threat that is taking people away from our platforms,” she says. “In some ways it’s the opposite.”

Facebook and Google are now in the unusual position of playing catchup. They’ve introduced their own “TikTok clones” like Facebook and Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts. Facebook is also changing its algorithm to take on the rival, Alex Heath reports at The Verge.

Yet TikTok’s ambitions are huge and growing: Where once could only place clips that ran for a few seconds on the service; now it’s up to 10 minutes. As the Wall Street Journal’s Dalvin Brown noted last year, TikTok is moving to the biggest screen in the home: to your connected TV set, where eyeballs are focused and where advertising supported video services are set to take off, Kafka calculates in a seperate article for Vox.

“If that works, it would compete even more directly with the streamers and networks,” Kafka says.

Perhaps the only solution for the established media companies wanting to curb TikTok’s might is to hope for intervention from the US government. TikTok is, after all, owned by a Chinese company.

Recall that the Trump administration attempted in 2020 to ban TikTok, or at least force it to sell to a US bidder. Kafka and others call this “ham-handed and transparently jingoistic,” but there are plenty of people who have concerns about TikTok’s presence in the US.

One argument focuses on the potential for abuse of private data. Buzzfeed’s Emily Baker-White reported that TikTok physically stores all data about its US users in the US, with backups in Singapore. This does mitigate some risks — the company says this data is not subject to Chinese law — but it does not address the fact that China-based employees can access the data.

Another argument, explained by Kafka in an episode of Vox’s Recode Media podcast, focuses on the fact that TikTok could be an enormously powerful propaganda tool, if the Chinese government wanted to use it for that reason.

An op-ed from last month in The New York Times was headlined “TikTok May Be More Dangerous Than It Looks.” It declared: “Donald Trump was right, and the Biden administration should finish what he started.”