The possibility of a TikTok ban is inching closer to becoming a reality at this point. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill that would bar the social media platform from operating in the U.S. unless ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, sells its stake.
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t begs the question: In today’s social landscape, do brands ever own their audiences?
The answer is no, according to three agency executives who say it’s time to start exploring contingency plans that don’t hinge on any of the walled gardens of social media titans like Meta, X or TikTok. Looking for the next frontier, some are pointing toward the fediverse.
Unless these businesses choose to make their own servers, then they can still be banned and lose their audience. And I don’t think a lot of them are going to realize that. However, going into the fediverse in any capacity is a step in the right direction, since you can just export a CSV file of the people you follow and import it somewhere else. Getting the people who follow you moved is a trickier thing, but some services like Mastodon do have that capability. So even if they start out on something like mastodon social and then realize they need their own server, they can set it up and then migrate.