TikTok’s creators mourn the app’s potential “overnight” success.

For internet sensation Erika Thompson, TikTok is the most powerful social media platform to teach her 11 million followers about her life’s passion: bees.

The loss of the US platform – made more likely after the Supreme Court upheld the ban, which is due to take effect next week – will have a “significant” financial impact on Ms Thompson, the Texas beekeeper, but it is also the loss of a training tool.

“There are a lot of other people on the platform who offer educational or informational content,” she told the BBC. “That’s the biggest loss, and that’s the thing to focus on, aside from the financial aspect, that’s the loss that we as a society — the people who use TikTok — will definitely feel.”

About 170 million Americans use the app and website. Unless its Chinese parent ByteDance sells the platform or there is executive intervention, the platform is set to shut down in the US on Sunday.

The social media giant’s fate has been left in the hands of the US Supreme Court after Democratic and Republican lawmakers voted last year to ban the video-sharing app over concerns about its ties to the Chinese government and concerns that the app was a risk national security.

TikTok has repeatedly said it does not share information with Beijing.

But users and content creators say the social media platform has become an integral part of society — and helped ordinary users grab the spotlight with millions of followers. It quickly became the preferred social network for some and a key source of income for others.

Now they are worried about what will happen if the ban is not lifted.

Creators who make a living from social media apps have told the BBC that TikTok is the best platform.

That was true for Ms. Thomspan, whose first TikTok video received more than 50 million views in the first 24 hours after it was posted.

“I haven’t experienced the same success on other platforms,” ​​she said. “I can post the same video on Instagram, for example, and get even close to being engaged.”

Ross Smith, who shares funny videos of his 98-year-old grandmother with more than 24 million followers on TikTok, described TikTok as one of the few platforms where it’s easy to become a creator.

With TikTok, he says, “you can be an overnight success.”

Other platforms trying to replicate TikTok’s short scrolling format have so far been unsuccessful, Mr Smith told the BBC. Ms. Thompson agreed.

“I rarely hear about people going viral on Instagram or someone being an Instagram sensation, but those are words you hear a lot on TikTok,” Ms Thompson said.

Cody James, a fashion influencer with tens of thousands of followers on TikTok, told the BBC that audiences don’t necessarily migrate from one platform to another.

“I know someone who has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and maybe only ten thousand followers on Instagram,” Mr James told the BBC.

Many content creators survive on the profits they earn from TikTok.

Some told the BBC their lives would change a lot without the platform.

If brands and companies want promotional content from a creator, they want those creators to post on TikTok, Nicole Bloomgarden, a fashion designer and artist, told the BBC.

“Indirectly, TikTok has been a big part of my income because all brands want their stuff promoted on the app,” Ms Bloomgarden said.

It is not statistically clear whether TikTok is the most profitable source of income for creators, but many have told the BBC that it accounts for a significant portion of their income.

2022 survey from a maker-focused startup Linktreefound that about 12% of freelance creators make more than $50,000 a year from their social media platforms.

About 46% said they earned less than $1,000, the survey of 9,500 people found.

This isn’t the first time a major social media platform has gone under.

In 2017, Vine, a platform where users could share videos of up to six seconds long, shut down.

It was a shock for the creators of that time.

Q Park, a content creator with 37.7 million followers on TikTok, was one of those people.

He spent years building a following on Vine — the only platform he was using at the time — and when it disappeared, he said, “it felt like my whole business was going down.”

But in a way it was good for him too. This forced him to learn how to create different content for different audiences.

“This experience has shown me that if you believe in your ability to create content, you will gain fans elsewhere,” Mr Park told the BBC.

With the ban looming, some creators have started flocking to another Chinese platform, RedNote is a competitor to TikTok, popular among young people in China, Taiwan and other Chinese-speaking populations.

Earlier this week, RedNote was the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store in the US.

While some creators are diversifying where they post in hopes of growing audiences elsewhere, others hope the ban doesn’t come to pass.

“TikTok is a beast,” Park said. “Part of me thinks it might be too big to fail.”

“It will be revived somehow, the economy is too big now.”

Additional reporting by Grace Dean and Natalie Jimenez.