Zach King, 30, is one of the most influential TikTokers with over 45 million followers on the popular social media platform. But the illusionist, who gained popularity with his magic 6-second Vine videos, says the US ban on TikTok “could potentially hurt” many creators just getting started. Zach, whose TikTok channel can be found at @ZachKing, spoke EXCLUSIVELY with HollywoodLife to share his feelings on the potential ban after Donald Trump issued executive orders on Aug. 6 that would restrict TikTok from operating in the US if they were not sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to a US-based firm by September 15.
“I think it’s hard, I don’t know much about the political side of the narrative. Obviously people have privacy concerns and that should be taken seriously if those are real threats,” Zach said, who creates digitally edited videos to look as if he’s doing magic. His incredibly creative clips have made him the third-most followed person on TikTok.
“But in terms of the ban, it’s a bummer because in social media we really need more players, more big competition that can compete with Facebook and Google, and for a creator landscape there are not a lot of options,” Zach said.
“You think about having a career and you automatically have to add YouTube to your roster and then some sort of Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter mix. So there’s not many places to go. And I love that there was this new option which was TikTok starting to emerge and they were just developing their marketplace for creators,” he continued.
“TikTok leaving could potentially hurt that mid to low tier creator who is just getting started. A lot of them on YouTube, they may have tried to grow on YouTube but right now it’s so competitive,” Zach said.
“There’s millions of people trying to make that their career, and TikTok allowed that chance once again from the algorithm to be seen and that’s what I’ll miss going away, is that these young creators were given potential and now it’s kind of pulled out and they’re going to have to find somewhere else to go.”
“I have a lot of friends on TikTok and we’ve all talked about the ban,” Zach explained. “I think what you’ll see is that the top-graders will be okay because they’ve already jumped to YouTube and other platforms. You can see that pattern emerge. There are also a handful of TikTok creators who came from other platforms and so it wasn’t their only one. But I have friends in that 2-5 million follower range and they’re the ones who were the most disappointed and they’re trying to figure out what their next step is.”