Murray Wood: Who's scary... and who's scary good?
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week, in a specia...
As TikTok users in the United States were unable to watch videos on the popular social media platform from Saturday night, Saskatchewan TikTok creator Dickson Delorme said the U.S. ban wouldn’t mean much to him.
The company’s app was also removed from prominent app stores, and President-elect Donald Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday he wanted Americans to be able to view his inauguration, and would issue an executive order dealing with the ban on Monday.
On Sunday afternoon, service was restored to U.S. TikTok users after Trump’s promise.
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“If my TikTok account went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t really affect me personally that much,” said Delorme, better known as Quick Dick McDick on social media,.
“But there are people that do make a living off of being quote, unquote influencers … and I would say that this is going to affect them greatly.”
Delorme said the ban is a great reminder for everyone that it’s important to have an income outside of a social media app.
“It’s just social media, and this is a good example that social media could go away with a snap of the fingers tomorrow,” said Delorme. “It’s important to make sure that you’ve got real jobs out there too, not just being on social media.”
Delorme is a farmer and rancher who started posting on TikTok close to three years ago, he also posts on YouTube, Instagram, X, and Facebook.
He estimates that close to 60 per cent of his audience is Canadian, with the remainder from America and the rest of the world.
“I don’t really use it that much, and it’s just not that important of a platform to me,” Delorme said. “If TikTok were to leave tomorrow, I don’t know if I’d miss it.”
The U.S. government had expressed concerns about TikTok’s connections to China through the app’s owner ByteDance related to privacy and national security.
“No matter what the app is, we should always be careful of what we’re allowing our social media accounts to access,” said Delorme.
The U.S. Supreme Court ban does not extend to Canada, which ordered the dissolution of TikTok’s Canadian business in November after a national security review of ByteDance.
TikTok has filed a legal challenge to fight Canada’s dissolution order, which stopped short of ordering people in the country to stay off the app.
— with files from Associated Press, Canadian Press and CKOM News
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