Followers Forever is our solution for platforms controlling our connections. The platforms can shut you down or the federal government can shut them down. Either way, we need to take back control of the ability for audience and creators to stay in touch with each other.

A Senate bill that could lead to a national TikTok ban passed with strong bipartisan support, threatening the app’s operations in the U.S. The law mandates that TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, must divest its stake in the app within a year to avoid the ban. Obviously the company does not want to sell.

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance Ltd. was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs, and now, roughly sixty percent of the company is owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group. An additional twenty percent of the company is owned by ByteDance employees around the world, including Australians. The remaining twenty percent is owned by the company’s founder, who is a private individual and is not part of any state or government entity. TikTok, which is not available in mainland China, has established Los Angeles and Singapore as headquarters locations to meet its business needs.

If the divestiture does not occur, TikTok would lose access to essential services like app stores and web hosting, effectively being banned in the U.S. Many senators claim the move is not about suppressing free speech and is about “protecting data”. This is opposition to their choices for American data and Facebook. President Biden has signed the legislation into law, setting the stage for potential legal challenges and a complex international business negotiation.

Followers Forever provides users with leverage against platforms that hold followers hostage with high switching costs. Platforms are not serving audience, they are serving them up to advertisers and grifters. When both audience and creators are directly connected they have the control and power.