Why I quit TikTok and never looked back

A TikTok ban will hit the US within days.

Oh, TikTok, what a trail of woe you are leading.

The app is already banned in India and it’s in dispute with lawmakers in many more countries.

Fear not for our brave army of content-creating TikTokkers. Rumor has it that parent company ByteDance is mulling a TikTok sale to the darling of the right, Elon Musk.

TikTok is already rife with bots and misinformation, so it should be perfect for a free-speech absolutist like Musk.

I’ve no idea if the sale will go ahead or how Musk will translate his far-right algo bait for a manic short-form channel like TikTok.

Whatever happens, I’d wager TikTok will pop back up on the US app store sooner rather than later, perhaps post-Trump inauguration.

Too much money is at stake.

Frankly, I don’t care much what happens with TikTok.

I tried using TikTok for a few months last year. I invested in a short-form program for creators and posed batch after batch of videos on TikTok. It felt like the thing to do, what with SEO traffic in the toilet.

I got lucky at first.

One or two of my videos went viral.

The rest did not.

My video creative wasn’t great. The program facilitator said I needed to spend an hour consuming content on TikTok daily to learn what works.

That’s sound advice.

If you plan on creating content for a channel or medium, do more of what’s already popping off, albeit with a unique spin.

However, much like living off a diet of McDonald’s and Coke, consuming short-form content rotted my attention span.

My heart sank every time I opened the app.

And my ideal clients (business owners who need help with their content strategy) aren’t wasting their afternoons swiping madly on TikTok.

Sure, I could have dialed in my booktok videos as I know the niche, but I couldn’t will myself enough to care about the platform.

So I logged off TikTok a year ago, deleted my app from my phone, and didn’t look back.

These days, I only create content for a channel if it reaches my ideal client and I enjoy the platform.

I care more for platforms that either have a long tail or don’t leave so heavily into an algo. For example, I recorded YouTube videos years ago that still drive engagement. So, this year, I’m doubling down on educational YouTube videos with my ideal client in mind.

Clearly YouTube is also algo-driven, but I prefer creating videos for that platform over short TikTok videos. That’ll sustain me when videos don’t pop off.

You don’t need to do video, anyway.

That’s my bag for 2025.

But, so many great ways exist to reach ideal clients, customers, and readers, like on LinkedIn, Substack, or over email.

So, why waste hours on a content strategy that you dislike?