Is the clock Tick Tocking down on Tik Tok? It sure would seem so after President Trump announced during a Friday night news dump that he plans to shut down the Chinese backed social media company, presumably to get revenge on the so-called “Tik Tok teens” who allegedly ruined attendance at his Tulsa rally when they signed up for thousands of fake tickets.
It’s probably not a good idea to piss off Generation Z in an election year but President Trump is an egotistical, narcissist who can’t help himself. He was besmirched and so this is his obvious next move: seeking revenge on those who wronged him. Even if those who wronged him are just teenagers making silly dance videos.
Logistically speaking, one of the big concerns if Tik Tok does indeed get banned is how will these content creators keep their audiences? Especially since these content creators have grown to depend on the revenue from their channels to survive during the coronavirus global pandemic. Can they simply port their followers over to a different platform like YouTube or Triller? The way you would port over your contacts when you get a new phone?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. All of the main social media sites are run by different companies that aren’t compatible with one another and all of your fans and followers won’t be on all of the same platforms as you. Not to mention the fact that each platform has its own unique style. Just because you’re successful on one platform like Tik Tok doesn’t mean you’ll be successful on another platform like YouTube. The mediums are totally different.
But, what if there was a better way? A way to take all of your followers with you wherever you went, turning them into literal followers? Well, I think there could be. All we’d have to do is create a digital driver’s license of sorts, a single unique identifier that establishes who we are and what we like regardless of what online platform we’re on.
Once established, all we’d have to do is follow somebody one time and we would then see their content automatically any time we log into any social media site. If we don’t want to see all of their content (say we like their photography on Instagram but not their opinions on Twitter) then we can opt out of that service. But the default setting would be to see everything. This unique ID card could help us sign up for other services across the web as well the way our Facebook account currently does, allowing us to further lessen our reliance on Mark Zuckerberg and co.
All in all, this would make life much easier for people who don’t have to recreate the wheel and search for their friends, family, or favorite celebrities every time they join a new service. But it would also make life easier for content creators who won’t have to go to great lengths to rebuild lost audiences or even gain followers in the first place.
Considering how many people have lost jobs recently due to the coronavirus pandemic, content creation has become more of a necessity than mere side hustle for a lot of people and that fact is only going to get magnified even more as time goes on and automation takes away more of our jobs. That’s why we should do everything in our power right now to make life easier for content creators the way a single online ID that syncs social media sites would.
Before time runs out…
Is an online ID that syncs up all of your social media accounts the Greatest Idea Ever?
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