TikTok Under Siege
At the same time, governments from Washington to Brussels are moving to ban or heavily regulate TikTok. Officially, it’s about security. Unofficially, it’s about power—who gets to control the world’s most addictive pipeline for culture. The irony? While leaders talk about “protecting the public,” millions of creators are scrambling to save livelihoods that depend on those short-form loops.
The Collision of AI and Politics
Here’s where it gets surreal: as TikTok faces bans, AI influencers are sliding into the gap. Think about it—why hire a human creator who can get deplatformed overnight when you can generate a digital star immune to sleep, illness, or legal headaches? Politics has created a vacuum, and AI is rushing to fill it.
What This Means for All of Us
We’re entering the attention economy endgame. If platforms ban the messy, unpredictable humans and replace them with flawless AI personalities, we risk losing the very thing that made social media matter in the first place—our humanity.
And yet, people will keep clicking. Because whether it’s an AI model with 20 million followers or a banned TikTok resurfacing on shady mirror sites, the demand for connection—and controversy—is unstoppable.
Final Thought
The viral question for 2025 isn’t “Who do you follow?” It’s “Do they even exist?”