We Fixed It, You're Welcome - TikTok's Future: Ban or Boom?

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

In this episode of "We Fixed It, You're Welcome" the hosts tackle the complex issue of the TikTok ban in the United States. Joined by guests Braeden Sorbo (TikTok influencer), Dylan Conroy (talent agent), and Sam Palazzolo (finance expert), they explore the multifaceted challenges facing the platform. The discussion covers national security concerns, data privacy, content moderation, and the impact on creators and businesses. The panel debates potential solutions, including American ownership, algorithm transparency, and creator diversification across platforms. While acknowledging the complexity of the situation, they offer insights on balancing free speech, user safety, and business interests in the evolving social media landscape. The episode highlights the far-reaching implications of TikTok's fate for creators, users, and the broader tech industry. Braeden Sorbo TikTokDylan ConroySam Palazzolo (https://www.sampalazzolo.com/) TikTok's Rise and Current Challenges Brief history of TikTok's evolution from Zhuyun to its current form Discussion of the recent 14-hour ban in the US and ongoing security concerns Security and Data Privacy Concerns Sam Palazzolo emphasizes the importance of national and individual security Dylan Conroy draws parallels to other Chinese tech platforms like Deep Seek Creator Economy and Monetization Braeden Sorbo shares insights on TikTok's creator fund and monetization challenges Dylan Conroy discusses the discrepancy in influencer rates between platforms Platform Diversification for Creators Dylan Conroy advises creators to diversify across multiple platforms Importance of building sustainable business models independent of social platforms Content Moderation and Algorithm Concerns Discussion on the impact of echo chambers and content manipulation Debate on the balance between free speech and responsible content curation Business Implications of a Potential TikTok Ban Analysis of how businesses and influencers might adapt to a TikTok shutdown Exploration of alternative platforms and their readiness to fill the void Social Commerce Integration Melissa Eaton inquires about TikTok's shopping integration compared to other platforms Dylan Conroy provides insights on YouTube Shop and emerging e-commerce trends in social media Potential Solutions and Future Outlook Discussion on possible ownership changes and their implications Debate on who should potentially acquire TikTok's majority stake __________________ Disclaimer: A quick disclaimer. We are going into this somewhat cold and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice or anything that would get us in trouble. These are our views and opinions. We're here to ask the kinds of questions everyone's thinking. Have an engaging conversation and maybe come to some conclusions that we feel are worth exploring. By the end, if we fixed it, you're welcome. All trademarks, IP and brand elements discussed are property of their respective owners. Music by Milo W.Produced by Straight Forward Media Group See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's something else here now. Something new. From. Exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. All right, here's how this works. In each episode, we pick a company we all know that has something going on right now. Then we put ourselves in charge and see if we can fix it. You'll be hearing from Melissa and Operations, Chino on people in culture, and me on marketing. My name's Aaron. As always, a quick disclaimer, we are going into this somewhat cold and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice, or anything that would get us in trouble. These are

our views and opinions. We're here to ask the kinds of questions everyone's thinking, have an engaging conversation and maybe come to some conclusions that we feel are worth exploring. By the end, if we fixed it, you're welcome. All trademarks, IP, and brand elements discussed are property of their respective owners. Welcome back to you. We fixed it. You're welcome. We've got a big episode. We're bringing in other perspectives. And this episode may be a very opinionated one. We'll see. And we've got a party on the pod today. So we'll get straight into it. Before we do, I want to introduce you to our resident finance panelist for this episode. Say hello to Sam Pelazolo. Sam, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, thank you, Aaron. Sam Palazzo, I let a tech start up to a financial private equity exit 13 years ago. Formed our family office called Tip of the Speer Ventures. I'm also Ex Deloitte. We specialize at Tip of the Spear in helping business leaders scale their organizations. I'm also an investment banking managing director at one of our banks here. And I'm in New York City in Manhattan. Thank you, Sam.

It's great to have you with us. Chino, it's your floor. tell us what we're here to fix, and then we'll introduce our guests for today. All right, folks, like Aaron said, it's a little spicy today. We're diving into a topic that has influencers panicking, brands and businesses, scrambling, and we're going to talk about the TikTok ban. After some back and forth legal battles and a lot of political drama to fuel a reality TV show, TikTok was officially banned in the U.S. for 14 hours on January 18th.

We're not clear we're being set up yet, and it's still looking at a little rocky, but we're going to dive into it. So that's what we're here to fix. We're going to fix TikTok over the course of a conversation. That's a big challenge. Fortunately, we're not alone. Today, your fearless fixers are also joined by two guests who are immersed in the world of TikTok. We're excited to add them on. First, let's meet Braden Sorbo. Share a bit about yourself, Braden. All right. Like you said, my name is Braden Sorbo. I am a 23-year-old actor, author, and TikTok influencer. half, unfortunately, but at the same time, it was the app that gave me my start. And so I do primarily comedic content, but also a lot of self-help for young men who struggle with depression, anxiety, OCD, and for young women as well.

Happy to have you, Braden. And we've got Dylan Conroy. And what should our listeners know about you, Dylan? How's it going, everybody? My name's Dylan Conroy. I'm also the host of a podcast called The Ad Podcast, where I interview C-suite in and around the marketing world. But over the last 15 years, I have been in the intersection of the creator economy, talent agencies, and social agencies. I also represent TikTokers, including Braden, and we've been working together for about a year now. So, yeah, you know, we haven't stressed too much about the band yet, and we can get into why I think it is, you know, not as big of a deal as a lot of people think. But, yeah, we'll see how it all shakes out.

Thanks for having us. Fantastic. So between all of us, I'd say the deck is stacked in our favor at this time. We'll see what happens. Like I said, we're here to fix TikTok. So Chino, what do we need to know about what's going on there before we get into our discussion? Yeah, so here's a quick background on how TikTok rose to the top and how the band came to be. So we actually need to rewind the clocks back to 2016. It used to be called Juyang, which was launched in China and created by Fight Dance. A couple years later, in 2018, ByDance bought a platform that you might remember musically, which merged to become

what we now know as TikTok. And so from there, things exploded, obviously, in 2019. During COVID, everyone was picking it up. I remember being like, what is this app? And, you know, 24 hours later, I was still scrolling through. It attracted over 100 million U.S. users. I'm Canadian. You know, I'm staying probably around the same.

for Canada as well. And it went from everyone from Genzi to your grandmas who were scrolling, dancing, and to be honest, really hooked on the, you know, For You page. And so while TikTok was taking over our screens, the U.S. government was taking notice. And in 2020, then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order to ban TikTok, citing national security concerns over its ties to China. There were fears that bite dance might be handling things and American data and, you know, fishy ways. And so when President Biden took office in 2021, he paused that for a second to make sure that there was a review.

But in the last two years, TikTok has been back in the hot seat with data privacy concerns that resurfaced. And the ban became very, very real on January 18th for a whole 14 hours, TikTok was officially shut down in the U.S. Although it was restored, just literally 14 hours later, you know, President Trump gave TikTok a 75-day extension to the ban, which was a huge lifeline, but I want to turn it to us to see, you know, what now? What should TikTok do now?

Well, I'll go ahead and I'll start if we're just opening the floor. What a lot of people fail to realize that I've noticed while talking with just my friends, family about the ban is that our government works with three branches. And it's ironic that most people don't even understand that you have the legislative, the judicial, and the executive. And so this ban wasn't just the president or wasn't just the Supreme Court. It started in the House and the Senate. And it was almost unanimously passed through.

So this was not just a one-sided issue. This just flew straight over to the executive of the president's desk. And although Trump initially kind of formed the ban, Biden did sign it into effect, like we mentioned two years ago, and it kind of fell back into the hot seat. And it's been sitting throughout the judiciary system and our legal courts for a long time until it finally made its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. And so once again, passing with a majority favor, this was not necessarily a single party issue.

This was something that both parties were like, we need to fix. And people my age and a lot of college kids and everyone younger is going, really, of all the things that we could be worrying about right now, I mean, you have literal Chinese companies buying actual land in America, but we're going to be focused on an app. I mean, as much as our elected officials were working, together to ban an app. All of the people on either side were going, this is the dumbest thing

and another waste of money. And so I think this 75 day extension could potentially turn out in our favor that really depends on if ByteDance is willing to sell their majority share, because that's what the extension is for. If BycDance does not give up over 50% equity in their company, then it looks like TikTok might actually go down. However, obviously, Elon with X is doing his whole video thing. Meta Zuckerberg has their whole reels and Facebook videos. So, all of these other companies are trying to kind of usurp that position because TikTok's in the hot seat right now. And that's why they're all, you know, donating to politicians and they're trying to say, oh, well, we're going to remove this feature that everyone hated for four years and we're going to implement this and we're going to try to make it more user-friendly.

And so they're trying to kind of take the spot that TikTok had. But if TikTok's willing to give up 50%, I see it coming back. To ask, you know, Brayden and Dylan as well as Sam a little bit about the business of TikTok, because I think that this is what's really interesting. What, you know, I think that the concern was all of the influencers that are on TikTok, my daughter being one of them, and how you make your money off of TikTok. And if TikTok goes away or if TikTok is restricted, where do you go? Like, where would you go for those things?

You know, my daughter did say that for a long time, it's been known that YouTube is where the money is. And so she's like, that's where you would want to go. And that's where everybody's going. She said, obviously, now you've heard about what's the red note. Red note. Red note. I was going to say red card.

Red card. I'm thinking soccer. Red note. And so there's all of these types of things. And yes, you're totally right. Meta is trying really hard with Instagram Reels to make it feel like TikTok, but it's not the same. And the same thing on LinkedIn, if you've noticed, LinkedIn has really kind of created this whole Reels thing for engagement. And I knew a UX designer who worked for Mata and she said that like that was their goal was to really get that algorithm going that they get they have on TikTok.

So from a business perspective, how do you think TikTok influencers are going to have to maybe really look at how they're making money and how they're, you know, partnering, et cetera, et cetera. Dylan, your thoughts? Sure. Yeah, yeah, I'll jump in for a second. So, you know, the funny thing about TikTok is that it's always been looked at as a discount fee, like from the perspective of influencer marketing. So Instagram is considered premium. Generally, you get paid between $18 to $22 for every thousand followers you have when you do a social media post or a real or even an Instagram story. There's some packaging efficiencies when you do multiple posts, et cetera.

but TikTok, because the people's numbers are so huge and the amount of views that they actually get on their content generally has nothing to do with how big they are, that's been both a good thing and a bad thing for the kind of the rise of influencer marketing on that platform. But at the end of the day, TikTok ushered in this idea of an algorithm-based economy versus a follower-based economy. So prior to TikTok, your value on a social platform was how many followers do you have? And when you post a piece of content, how many of those followers tend to see it? Things like YouTube and Instagram prior to TikTok were very dependable for delivering, you know, somewhere between 10 to 20% of that audience to a piece of branded content and then integration. But then now that TikTok comes along, like you can, I've heard of people going viral on the very first video that they post on TikTok. I had a friend that posted their very first TikTok and it got over 2.5 million views.

And instantly overnight, they were quote-unquote an influencer. So that's been a big component is that TikTok has always been looked at as kind of unpredictable and a bit of a bargain. But if you get down to like what the CPMs are, generally it's about five. So you can see the discrepancy is about like a 25 percent. You're getting 25 percent of your, of what you would get if you had the same audience on Instagram or YouTube, just from posting on TikTok and taking brand dollars there. Now, Brayden probably has a little bit more of an understanding of how the payouts work.

So all of these platforms pay out money directly to creators based on how successful they are on the app. Those creator funds tend to wax and wane depending on priorities. I'm hearing on the street that all of the platforms are opening up creator funds again to woo all the TikTokers over. to their given platform. So Snapchat's relaunching creator funds. Instagram is giving out, I think, a $5,000 to $10,000 bonus

this month to creators that hit minimum thresholds. So there's a gold rush for sure on the other platforms to bring over all the TikTokers. But I mean, at the end of the day, it really depends on how much of a personality you are outside of just building a following on social media. If you're an actor like Braden, or if you are a music, or if you are an athlete, people are going to follow you based on who you are.

But if you built your platform and you're only famous on TikTok and you only have a following on TikTok, it's going to be really hard if you're not considered a household name to bring that audience with you anywhere. Braden, maybe you have some opinions on that. Yeah, no, I would 100% agree with everything you just said. I will also add that my content was deemed unmonetizable by TikTok. So I actually don't make money on it. So when I was making my videos talking about the ban, I was going, frankly, it doesn't necessarily affect me.

I mean, obviously, I can't say, oh, I have two million followers on TikTok anymore if the band were to have gone through. But I have friends, one of my good friends, his name is Mega American. He does these travel videos that are five seconds long, and he films his camera, or films his face, and pans to the most beautiful view you've ever seen. It's like an iPhone screen paper. He has 14 and a half million followers. He was making money. I have a friend Brian Andrews, who's a country singer out in Kansas. he was making money on TikTok.

You know, so just because I, per se, wasn't necessarily making the same type of money. I had brand deals and things like that, but not just the straight creator payouts because my jokes were deemed, you know, too inappropriate or whatever. Yeah, they were M-rated for mature audiences. But I have seen the kind of creator fund go up and down.

And when it first was launched, it was the worst thing you'd ever seen. If you joined it, they would purposefully hinder your growth so that they would pay you less. And so you joined the creator program and you would get maybe 10% of your normal views and you would get paid for all of those views.

But because, you know, if you averaged 100,000 views, which would have been equivalent to a lot more money, you were only getting 10,000 views. So not only did your page look like it, it just died, but you weren't really, the money wasn't really worth it because brands would take a look and see, oh, this guy doesn't get any views anymore. So why would we even want to hire him to make a video for us?

And so I know a lot of people, myself included, who joined the initial creator payout sharing program. And then we left because it was just, it was just unsubstantial. Like it just didn't make a good impact on our accounts. And so just speaking from experience, seeing these companies kind of bring a new one, I know Snapchat was very good at it. I had a friend who was making six figures monthly with his Snapchat videos on the Spotlight program when it first launched.

And roughly the same on YouTube shorts. He was one of the first people to get onto the YouTube shorts scene. And because of it, he was rewarded handsomely. And so I see that the other companies bringing this in as a net positive and a good thing, because once again, it brings in that competitive market. And so who can draw more people to their platform? Right. And Sam, I want to ask you if the drive for creatives is if the creatives are loyal to the program,

there's a big, you know, state side creative push, right? And a willingness to monetize. And you even have creators stepping up to say, we're going to invest in this. platform, we'll take the 50% stake or whatever is needed to balance it out and to legitimize it here. What do you think from a business perspective is the holdout to say, okay, good, let's get creators involved. I don't know that there's a lack of interest in funding. There's so much money at stake here from an organization perspective.

The key point, though, to keep in mind is that, you know, this isn't a suggested ban for the sake of banning. This is a suggested ban for the sake of national security and individual security. If you think about where it is that we've, as a business economy, kind of blown things up in a bad way, it is when we've had hacks occur within our organizations and private information has been dispersed to the public. You know, here's what I know, having sat on the board of directors for a cybersecurity firm is that these cyber criminals are extremely deep pocket funded. They're extremely well organized and they're extremely relentless. So I mean, we can take a look at there's no shortage of people that want access to TikTok, be it creators or be it from a pool of, yeah,

we'll put up the funding. Let's make an American company. But it is one of those things, of the security issues that are at stake here. That's why the original ban was brought through. And I don't want to lose sight of that in our conversation today. Yeah, Sam, that's a great point. And I don't think it's any coincidence that the same week that TikTok gets banned, the next week we see Deepseek, which is a AI platform that's supposedly, you know, a hundred times less expensive and ten times better than everything we have in America.

I mean, it seems like a sci-up, in my opinion. China's just launching another tool and another marketing program to get a bunch of users. And I've already heard stories of early deep seek users from a corporate level have already had cyber issues and hacks and things happen. So these are sometimes hard to tie one issue to another. I think with social media, you know, passwords get hacked and you get hacked all the time with social media. but it's usually individuals getting hacked. Now, if you think about Deepseek and a company comes and hooks up all its data to Deepseek because it wants AI insights, well, now you've given away the security of your entire company,

not just the security of you as an individual on your personal device. So I think we have to look at the bigger implications of China being a closed market where no U.S. companies are allowed to bring our apps and our software and our tech into their market and service their customers, and it's, you know, massive, massive market. But we give China all day the opportunity to run rampant inside of the U.S. market and throw anything they want, and, you know, whether it's manufactured products, pharmaceuticals, food, precursors to fentanyl, and now, you know, software that definitely has bad intentions from at minimum a data collection perspective and an algorithmic point of view

to influence, but probably much more nefarious national security issues, as Sam is alluded to. Well, as consumers, I would say we volunteer our data and our privacy, and we, you know, we offer it up all day long to apps and social media. And it's, you know, we don't know what happens to it. So why would we assume that TikTok is any more nefarious than any of the other platforms we're using all day long? Yeah, exactly. The only difference being that TikTok's not owned by an American company, and so the American government can't take your data that Chinese can. I agree with that to a degree, but it's like, you know, meta was in this hot seat a few

years ago. Like, we can't forget that as well. And so when you look at data security again, husbands and cybersecurity have friends, really good friend that works as like the top security person at TikTok currently. And, you know, there's always that, like, it's our data, right? It's what you do on your phone. is why we have passcodes and Apple has, you know, brought in different security measures, why there's many updates.

But to your point, Aaron, we're willingly giving our data away. So if you think about Red Note, Alyssa, you mentioned, you know, the day before, it was a 74% increase in U.S. users on Red Note. So people were saying, hey, TikTok fans coming. We don't care about our data. We are willing to give it to the. Chinese government if that's what it takes to stay on this platform. And we kept talking about, you know, meta and X Twitter, I like Twitter, it'll always be Twitter in my mind, trying to,

you know, duplicate what they didn't. If you remember Snapchat back in the day, right? It was a huge thing, as you were mentioning Raiden when, you know, Snapchat shorts came on and all of that. That was a huge win. And then was it meta bought them? And then it moved to Instagram Reels and then Snobes. And then that kind of died a little bit. It's kind of having its resurgence again because, you know, all of the social media apps are thinking, okay, what are other alternatives? But like you said, Dylan, it is an algorithm. It's the algorithm is what makes TikTok TikTok. And so I'm wondering how TikTok can, as a company, can keep that. So say, you know, we get 50%, 51% buyout and it stays. how does it maintain kind of this integrity?

How does it maintain, you know, us trusting them a little bit more, if that's even possible? You know, what type of data communication and transparency we'll need to see? Like, how can we fix it if it were to stay? Integrity isn't the issue, is it? I mean, ownership doesn't change the algorithm. And the beauty of TikTok is you can, dead scroll for hours and continue to see engaging content. But the real issue, the issue is we're on a collision course. We're on a collision course as a country, and it's our opportunity

to identify who's driving, who's got their hands on the wheel. Not every creator who's out there influencers like Braden, who's trying to utilize his platform for good to solve depression in young men. But this collision course I'm talking about, it is at our detriment as a country. And you mentioned the hot seat that Zuck was sitting on a couple years ago. Well, guess what? How many more of these collision courses or school shootings or disasters that could have been avoided because of a technology platform are we going to stand for? I think it's not an ownership issue. It's an integrity of the algorithm. So I think watch for this collision course. Yeah. I'm going to be with that, Sam. And I think that there needs to be, you know, measures put in

place to kind of safeguard it so that people are not in echo chambers, to be honest, because, you know, as much as we say school shootings, again, the topic of why are we talking about TikTok when, I'm sorry, I'm a Canadian, I have no idea how guns are allowed to be as prevalent as they are. I don't understand why people can have an AK. And she's like, I'm terrified. I'm in California and I've been here for a few months. I'm scared, even though it's California. So that was a problem way before TikTok, way before like the Reddit and the four chans of the world.

That has always been a problem. We've just focused, as you said, because this is a Chinese government. Again, there's national security measures, even from a Canadian stip as a Canadian speaking. I understand that. But are those nefarious? intent? Like, is that really taking away from larger issues? Are these echo chambers that you're talking about? Like, Braden, I've seen some of your comment as well, like your content. I like some of the things. I don't agree with other things. And some people can say that's an echo chamber too, because that has also helped read in-cell a little bit when we're talking about men's depression.

And, you know, he has, he's coming from a great point, but people can take that further in the same algorithm to kind of lean into a little more extreme thinking here. And, you know, there have been school shootings like that. So is it a job for every single platform to have some type of measure put in place to kind of stop that in the algorithm? Is TikTok able to put that in place? Is if we have an American buyout able to do that? We'll see. But it doesn't change. You know, you can't just say one thing is, you know, one view is more important than the other. important because we look at, you know, Gaza, for example, a lot of this hot seat came up back on October 7th when people were seeing real live images in Gaza. And so, you know, it was

completely contradictory to what the American government was sharing and what the media was sharing and that was a problem. And so, you know, you can have it at the extreme one way and I agree with you there, Sam, but there's also the other way too. And so how can TikTok's algorithm them measure and like figure that out essentially. So if I may answer first, I love both of your takes and I would take it a step further in the sense that there's really nobody driving the bus right now. You know, we're on this collision course and the driver just sort of opened the door and bailed. I know you mentioned you're in California. You have nothing to, sorry, you have nothing to worry about as far as guns go except for bad people getting them because they're going to do that

regardless. I mean, even I as a law-abiding citizen, I can't go and buy an AK-47, which sucks because they're so cool. But that's besides the point, as far as preventing echo chambers and content manipulation and everything along that goes, I am a free speech absolutist. I have the mindset that you should be able to say whatever it is that you would like, and I should be able to respond, however I would like. That is just how discussion works. And the second we start putting hindrances on that is when we get into this sort of dangerous territory, you guys brought up school shootings, and we can address that, but if we really want to get to the core of the issue, 75% of women before the age of 45 will have taken at least one form of an antidepressant.

50% of men before the age of 50 will be on one form of antidepressant or diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder as well. So there's clearly not just an algorithm problem going on in America today. What we're seeing is this overwhelming of our brain. brains and and as humans we are not built to handle it. And so when Sam brings up scrolling on TikTok for four hours a day, it completely destroys your ability to form connections with people. It obliterates your attention span. And so it's more than just, okay, well, what are we going to do about the echo chambers? What are we? We have to be conscious about the content that we're taking in and

also avoid the doom scrolling. I mean, people are at rates that we've never seen before in terms of lack of social interaction. There is a study that just came out last year that said that roughly 40 to 50% of men aged 18 to 25 had never approached a woman in real life, not even gone up and talked to one. Because if you go online, all you have is content of women who film themselves in the gym, shaming men for looking in their direction, or girls who tell the story of the absolute worst time someone ever approached them. And guys will see that, and they will assume, because that's all that they're being shown, they will just assume that that's how people are. even if that's not the case, which it isn't, it's very hard to break someone out of that mindset

when that's all that they have been consuming, especially for a long period of time. And so this crisis that we're seeing in relation to not having a driver is because the driver looks behind him, saw all these crazy people doing these things on the bus and said, screw this, man, I'm out of here. No, I would agree with you, too. And, like, you know, I went to school for neuroscience and psychology and mental health support prior to all these social coming in. And of course, again, this is what I'm talking about with those measures.

there needs to be measures in place to stop the doom scrolling. There needs to be measures in place to stop the echo chambers. That said, when you go back to, you know, you're an advocate for free speech, which I am as well, but also understanding that free speech has a consequence. The reason that women are posting this is because real life as a woman, you know, you're targeted. You're unsafe in a lot of places that people, again,

you talk from a perspective of a man speaking, but what about the, as a woman, I have, being uncomfortable in a gym and I felt uncomfortable with someone coming up to me at night and so sure we have that conversation but what about the other side and I think that's really important to bring to the table and so if people are so far on their echo chamber that they only think women and this is all that it can be or they don't get the other piece as to maybe why women feel like this and maybe what's a better way to approach that that can be dangerous so again echo chambers on either side shouldn't happen.

People need to, you know, touch grass and go outside and speak to people. That is true. But this is why measures for both doom scrolling and for the algorithm and stopping those echo chambers are important. So I would love to kind of turn back to you. How do we fix it? Yeah, I think the problem. Complexity of what we're talking about in our topic is like really threefold. I think we've all brought this all up.

So there's TikTok as in terms of the security. Dylan, you brought that up. That's great. Dylan and Sam both brought it up and accountability. You know, so security, accountability. I think Abradin and Chino, we've talked about the content and the communication and what it does and the algorithms and what comes up on your for you page. And then there's a business of TikTok, right? So, you know, they're all in it.

We're all in it to make money. So TikTok is not a nonprofit. it. Let's get real. So the, you know, so, you know, I know when we started, we were talking about that, about the business of TikTok and like how, you know, when we talk about like the influencers, like a braid in, like my daughter, etc, etc. There's also businesses involved and partnerships involved. And so like how do you attach yourself to a partner and how do you, you know, and all of that. So this is a very complex ecosystem that TikTok has created. and that the users have, we've all bought into, figuratively and literally.

And so now with the pending idea that this is potentially going away, it's opening the doors, the floodgates, right, to actually disperse all those types of, all those three things to these other platforms. And the question is, how do you control, you know, so Snapchat doesn't, and Instagram and meta doesn't become the next TikTok. Maybe it already is. LinkedIn doesn't become, you know, like become doom scrolling on LinkedIn. It kind of feels like that.

It's not everybody who's losing their jobs, you know, all that. So I think there's like a, but there's like some meaty questions here, you know, of how to solve that. I don't know. Obviously, I think the six of us are pretty, we have expertise in each of our arenas. I don't know that we can solve that, but those are some really good questions. because from a business perspective, like Braden, I would like to know, like, did you and your sponsors or your partners start talking about, like, what you wanted to do or where you wanted to go? Or were you already pretty much distributed around YouTube and other places? I mean, I was pretty distributed already.

It wasn't necessarily as big of a concern for me. Thank God. As far as the whole business thing goes, that would necessarily. be up to each individual company. I mean, obviously we want to prevent doom scrolling, but at what point is the government getting involved and forcing that too much? I mean, in China, you can't play video games after, you know, 11 o'clock at night. You can't, you know, watch TV after a certain period. Like, there are certain limitations that they have on their citizens, and that's complete oppression. We've lost freedom at that point. You can only do certain things when, you know,

the government says it's okay, and it's just this kind of shadow corporation overseeing every single thing that you do. And so it's for the same reason that we have measures in place to stop people from drinking and driving. You know, you get a DUI, you go to AA, or you do something along those lines. There can be measures put in place and aren't necessarily an encroachment or infringing on another person's, you know, rights. And there are things that the government shouldn't be kind of touching on that more should be left up to the people themselves, right? I have my family, I have my friends. And if they care about me and they know, notice a bad trend starting to occur, there are things that they can do to help me as opposed to,

you know, some sort of larger body. And I hope it doesn't have to get to that point. But obviously, that is where it might end up. I'll talk. I'll say it come. Oh, go ahead. I was just going to talk real fast to the bit to just a general business principle that I advise all of the influencers that I work with or manage. And it's diversification. There's no, there's no reason why you shouldn't be on every platform. It's not hard. One of the, actually, one of the biggest things that I was bummed out about TikTok potentially going away is TikTok is essentially my camera. TikTok and Capcut are powerful editing tools. And I usually start by creating content on TikTok.

Then once I post it to TikTok, it gets saved at my camera roll. And that same video goes across every single platform, including platforms like Reddit, platforms like telegram, platforms like Pinterest. you can use that same video that you created in TikTok across every single platform, including LinkedIn now with the vertical video feed and the emphasis on the vertical video feed. I had a video the other day on LinkedIn get 80,000 views. It was one third of all of the views I've generated in the history of my LinkedIn account because they are prioritizing videos so heavily.

So I think that's a big component is diversify and not just, and as a, as a creator, you can't ever depend completely on any one platform because platforms change, algorithms change, business models change, trends change. What they can't ever take from you are own channels that you have, such as your email list or your text SMS list or your customers on a Shopify store. You should be thinking about ways to diversify and quite frankly create sustainable business models as a creator while you have your fame and influence that is completely independent of you ever having to rely on a single dollar from the platforms or brand ever again. So, you know, that's what we always advise our creators is build things,

invest in things, and build business models that aren't dependent on the social platforms. That way, you never get put in that position, whether it's a government situation or just something like Vine that just goes out of style and another platform copies the feature. And then everybody's like, all right, I'm going to Instagram. Vine isn't cool anymore. It doesn't matter because it was a feature, not an app. Dylan, can I ask you a question about social commerce integration? So it seems like TikTok makes it super easy from a customer experience from a, you know,

to actually shop because it's in app and you don't have to like go anywhere else. and it just takes you right to whatever outfit they're wearing, whatever drink they're drinking, whatever it might be. So do other platforms have, you know, a focus on trying to make sure that their shopping integration function is as strong as TikToks? Or do you think TikToks? I've heard really, I've heard really good things about YouTube shop. You know, the problem I think is that for a long time, people didn't really want to, you know,

We saw that these massive crazy numbers of online kind of QBC style live selling in China. And it took a while for it to kind of catch up to the American market. And a lot of creators weren't that interested in it until they saw how much money they could make. I know TikTok creators that are strictly TikTok shop people. They've got like a thousand followers and they're making $30,000 a month just creating content for TikTok shop. They don't care about following. they only care about affiliate sales and commissions and being good QVC style online shopping hosts. And I think that model is coming heavy for America.

But you also have to think about the idea that like every app has features and behaviors. And when other apps try to adopt it, if it doesn't feel natural and native to the app, then people don't do it. Like do you guys remember when LinkedIn had stories? Nobody cared. You know, for a while, Facebook reels and Facebook stories, for a while, I'm like, I don't like this. This is what I do on Instagram. And eventually it did kind of work in both places. YouTube shorts at the beginning.

Everybody was like, I don't do this on YouTube. I go to YouTube to watch podcasts. Now they've kind of, you know, come to some degree of like, oh, yeah, shorts is a place to go and do vertical video scrolling. LinkedIn, I don't ever touch the video feature because I never see an update there. So, you know, and that's not what people go to. LinkedIn for. They go to LinkedIn to, you know, create relationships for business. So or job seek or things like that. So you have to think about people's behaviors and action intent for each of these apps. And that's why always just being one thing to all people and copying doesn't seem to work.

Or you talked about Snapchat. Snapchat never emphasized creators for a really long time until they found themselves at doing that to their detriment. So then they launched Spotlight. And did they do it too late? Who knows? So you have to really think about user behavior across these platforms and why do people come to the apps? But yeah, I think long answer to your question, I think, yeah, YouTube and probably Instagram being second and Amazon's creating its own creator ecosystem that only exists for people to shell products on Amazon and get them to click the Amazon button to buy. Well, I think TikTok's sitting on a moment where they haven't, there hasn't been, you know, a mass exodus at this point, but creators and others are wary.

And if there's a good enough clone lookalike, you know, replication that doesn't have the complexity of this multinational arrangement, maybe, you know, there will be a departure and someone else will take the spotlight. But it's not, we're not there yet. Sam, I'd be interested, you know, if it comes down to the wire again and there has to be, let's say, the 51% handover, aside from the highest bidder, who deserves to take that share? You know, I don't know. Mr. Beast. I think it's one of those things.

Yeah. I think it should be us. It should be Dylan, Braden, and Oliver joining in. Hey, I'm great with that. I'd like the use of it, wouldn't you? Braden, who would you want to see as a representative of creators and have your interests of creators like you in mind? Well, shoot, I would do it myself if I was given the opportunity.

I know that you have Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful, putting in a bid with a couple other people. You have Elon interested, although I'm sort of iffy on him buying it because, if anything, he'd probably buy it and then just trash the app in favor of making X the more, because he just added the videos tab to X. I know Mr. Beast. I have mixed feelings about him because the beastification of the social media sphere is what led us to the, you know, lack of attention span that we have today where people need in constant simulation. and I'm not necessarily a fan of that. And so in terms of bringing something that I would return TikTok to what it was in the summer of 2019 when I first joined where people could say and do what they pleased. And it wasn't necessarily an app where people were trying to, you know, shake what their mama gave them and make a couple bucks that way. They would actually create genuine, authentic, real content that others could relate to. And so that's frankly what people need more of, not less.

Right. We're being asked to wrap it up. That's our conversation. Let's see. So we came up with a handoff of TikTok, capitalizing on the short term moment where they have to move one way or another, getting creators more involved, working. We talked a little bit about working on that monetization. And we need a buyer. We need an agreement. Dylan, let's start with you. Do you think we fixed TikTok or left it better than we found it? it? I think we left it better than we found it, but I don't think we definitely fixed it. It's way too complex, too many moving parts, but I think we made progress, and I think the ideas that we discussed today are real and tangible. So I'm excited to see what the future holds for the platform and the continued growth and change within social media in general. How about you, Braden? Well, John 21, 25 says it had everything Jesus said and done be written down, there wouldn't be enough books. And so I think this podcast covered a lot, and there's still so much more.

that we couldn't possibly get to all of it in just a quick 40-minute session. However, I do think we've made some good points, and hopefully people walk away from this feeling, at least a little bit inspired. What do you think, Sam? I think if we kill it off, we send a clear message to tech leaders to be careful of how it is that you affect our domestic U.S. product, which is people first. Interesting.

Tina, what do you say? I think there's a lot more questions than we, we got to answer, but I think we left it better than we found it. And so, you know, we'll see what happens with TikTok, but it's still so uncertain. There needs to be some form of safeguards in place. I don't know what that looks like, but something needs to happen and give so that, yeah, it cannot be a national security issue, global security issue, really, because it's not just the U.S.

It's, there's, you know, the entire role has access to TikTok, so that can be a scary thing. How about you, Melissa? Do we fix TikTok? I'm with everyone else. I think that this is a very complex, complex issue. But I love the diversity of the panel and what we brought up. And I think that we brought up some really good points. So, you know, from a business perspective, influencers like Braden, Dylan mentioned this, need to diversify their social media presence.

And I think they've already all done that, especially good influencers. We have to invest in content, creativity and accountability. We want to leverage those influencers and the communication that they may have and the scope that they have and reach they have and explore those emerging platforms and not recreate the problems of TikTok that we have currently by just, you know, dumping that into meta or wherever, you know, X or wherever it might go. I think that's definitely something that, you know, history does repeat itself, but let's be cautious about that. And I really appreciate the idea of, you know, getting to the root of it and like talking about

data security and things like that because I know that like most people, you always get the terms and conditions, right? I mean, I don't think anyone doesn't click on it because they want to see what's next on the next page. And so to me, I think that's really an interesting component that we have to think about. And, you know, I would be sad to see my cat TikTok go away and the I got stuck in like some French cuisine thing. I don't know what that is. But yeah. So I enjoy it.

And I know my, you know, like I said, my daughter's an influencer. She enjoys it. And so it's one of those things that I think is going to be very difficult for us to solve in just one sitting. Maybe it's time. Agreed. I think it's a much bigger conversation than we've had. And I really like it.

This has been a free free wheeling one. We've touched on a lot of different areas. Of course, this is a sense. is unfolding in real time. And by the time this comes out, there may be a buyer. There may be shut down. We don't know. But, but I, you know, I like the fact that we, we have our stance and our take on it and that we brought in different viewpoints and perspectives for this specific conversation. I think that added a lot to it. So before we close out, let's tell our listeners where they can find our guests for today. Braden, where can our listeners find you?

Just Braden Sorbo on all social media is B-R-A-E-D-E-N-S-O-R-B-O and then Sorbo, studios.com for the website. Thanks. And you, Dylan? Dylan C. Conroy across the interwebs and check out the ad podcast at podcast platforms wherever you listen or watch. Awesome. And Sam? Find out more about me and my business scaling operation at sampellazolo.com. Perfect. Thank you. And the rest of us, you can find us at we fixed it pod.com,

which includes our full episode archive. And thank you so much to Dylan Conroy, Braden Sorbo, and San Pella Zolo, and we'll see you next time. Let's go. Thank you. This podcast is produced by Straightforward Media Group, All Rights Reserved. If you'd like to learn more about how a podcast can help your company establish authority and generate leads, please email us at Eric at straightforwardmg.com or go to straightforwardmg.com for more information.