The good, the bad and the algorithm: What banning TikTok could do to Colorado creators

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Teal Lehto launched her TikTok career with a 2-minute video about drought in the West. There was no dancing, no memes, no catchy soundbites. Just Lehto, speaking honestly and sounding slightly annoyed.

“When people talk about climate anxiety, I think they imagine a young woman like me being like ‘Oh no! The polar bears,’ but it’s an actual gripping fear about what will my life look like in this area 50 years from now,” Lehto said. “So I made that video and I posted it.”

The video performed well — it has since its 2022 launch gathered nearly 50,000 likes and 1,700 comments — and Lehto kept posting on her profile, @westernwatergirl, partially out of spite.

“I’m really frustrated with the way that things are happening in the Colorado River Basin … I consistently get told that I need more degrees, or that I’m being naive, or that I’m imagining a utopia. When in reality I’m just asking people to question the way things are. ”

— Teal Lehto, @westernwatergirl on TikTok

“I’m really frustrated with the way that things are happening in the Colorado River Basin,” said Lehto, who posts from her home in Durango. “I have been since I was in college, but I consistently get told that I need more degrees, or that I’m being naive, or that I’m imagining a utopia. When in reality I’m just asking people to question the way things are. That will always keep motivating me.”

Lehto’s videos are fast-paced and jargon-free. A lot of them have a sense of urgency, a kind of “can you believe this??” tone that plays well on the platform.

That’s because TikTok’s algorithm is trained to serve up videos that people linger on, a metric the platform calls “time spent.” Appealing to a user’s emotional response, more than anything else, ratchets up the time spent on a video, explained Jonathon Stalls, an artist and creator known as @pedestriandignity on TikTok.

Stalls posts TikToks that show public infrastructure failures around the Front Range, like bus stops with no wheelchair access, unreachable crosswalk buttons, sidewalks that spit pedestrians into the street.

“I literally see that when I’m more heated about an injustice, it reaches new groups of people who are seeing (my content) for the first time. So then they get heated about it, or maybe they get defensive,” Stalls said. “I see this time and again, anger on top of anger, and it causes this type of disconnect.”

Lehto and Stalls have leveraged their TikTok profiles to advance their advocacy work. Lehto, who has more than 61,000 followers, has landed work with environmental nonprofits and regional magazines; Stalls, with over 111,000 followers, has led trainings on equitable infrastructure, shown hundreds of people how to engage with local politicians and taken Colorado Department of Transportation officials out for educational walks.

All of that could change as soon as Friday, Jan. 10, when the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments about the impending ban on TikTok, set to take effect Jan. 19.

TikTok’s influence has grown massively over the past four years while the federal government kicks around the platform’s fate. TikTok has seen the sharpest rise in regular users between 2021 and 2024 among all social media platforms, growing from about 21% of Americans to 33%. For comparison, YouTube and Facebook, the most widely used social media sites, grew by 4 percentage points and 1 percentage point, respectively.

TikTok is the new mall, the new Billboard top chart, the new travel agency. More than half of the platform’s users, or the equivalent of 17% of all American adults, say they regularly get their news from TikTok. Both President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris joined the platform during their presidential campaigns as a way to reach younger voters. It’s also a place where conspiracy theories spread without consequence.

It’s a place for creativity, entertainment and learning new skills. At the same time, it’s linked with declining mental health among teens, and is under investigation for knowingly putting its young users at risk for the sake of engagement.

In short, it’s seeped into nearly every corner of American society.

And if there’s one word to sum up how the content creators and the chronic commentators, the tech experts and the politicians and the parents all feel about the platform, it’s this: conflicted.

Why is the government trying to ban TikTok?

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, has faced threats to its U.S. market for the past four years, since the first Trump administration tried to boot TikTok by executive order. That began a flurry of legal and legislative debates that have persisted throughout the Biden administration, resulting in a “sale-or-ban” law, which is set to take effect the day before Trump begins his second term.

At the federal level, the debate is one of national security versus the First Amendment.

Lawmakers and the Biden administration are concerned about vast amounts of data that TikTok collects from its users and the platform’s proximity to the Chinese Communist government. They worry China could use the platform to spread misinformation, to bury anti-China content, or to promote anti-American propaganda.

More than 30 states and the federal government already ban the app from government-issued devices and networks (with some of those restrictions extending to public universities — though students report switching onto cellular data to access TikTok). The state of Montana went so far as to ban TikTok on all devices, but a federal judge blocked the law before it could take effect. The app isn’t banned in Colorado by law, but the city of Aurora issued its own ban in 2023 on city-issued devices and networks.

ByteDance has countered that banning the platform infringes on the free speech rights of the 170 million Americans who use it — or roughly half the U.S. population. TikTok has more than 1 billion active users globally.

Proponents of the ban have pointed to the platform’s demonstrated ability to mobilize its user base. Before the potential ban was voted into law in April 2024, TikTok sent push notifications to its U.S. users urging them to call their congresspeople and oppose the law. Some congressional offices reported upward of 900 constituent calls that day, an unusual tactic for a company facing allegations of exerting political sway.

Data surveillance, the other major concern for Congress, has been documented in at least one instance. In 2023, Forbes reporter Emily Baker-White learned the company was using the app to track her whereabouts while she covered the company, though she has said ByteDance was more interested in her internal sources than censoring her work.

To date, Congress has not provided any evidence the Chinese government has ever accessed American data. The danger, so far, is all hypothetical, though lawmakers have alluded to “classified” information on multiple occasions.

TikTok is known for its massive data collection capacity, some of which is detailed forthright in its privacy policy, that it uses to tailor its highly user-specific algorithm and recommend ads. Location is one contentious datapoint, but Facebook, Instagram and Google all track their users’ locations as well. The specific data that Congress is concerned about protecting was not specified during the hearing.

That’s part of what bothers skeptics of the ban, who fear it singles out TikTok while ignoring the underlying issue of American data protection, or lack thereof. Temu, a Chinese-owned shopping company, for instance, was the most downloaded free app from the Apple store in 2024. TikTok ranked third.

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A few dissenting Representatives tried to point this out. 

“Let’s say you have an entity over here that divests. What makes them not then take the data, sell it to a data broker, and it gets washed and ends up still in the bad actors’ hands?” Arizona Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican, asked the committee. “You have to understand, there’s even articles out this week of our own three-letter agencies buying their data now from data brokers instead of doing the tracking. We need to think dramatically, more globally.” 

Opponents also note banning TikTok provides a competitive advantage to companies like Google and Meta with their own video platforms, and third-party services still can purchase data that tells them just about anything they want to know about a consumer. 

Baked into the arguments are seemingly endless threads about the way technology is changing faster than anyone can keep up with.

So what are we really talking about, when we’re talking about the TikTok ban?

The past four years in under a minute

Scrutiny of TikTok ramped up in August 2020, when then-President Trump signed an executive order that kicked off what has come to be known as the “TikTok ban.” The order singled out TikTok as a national security threat due to the vast amounts of data it collects on its users and the proximity of that data to the Chinese Communist Party. Congress pointed to laws in China that compel companies to share data with them if requested. 

The order faced legal challenges that weren’t resolved before President Joe Biden took office and rescinded it, opting instead to craft legislation that would provide a firewall between TikTok and China.

In March of this year, Congress passed the — deep breath — Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which gave TikTok’s parent company ByteDance until Jan. 19, 2025, to sell the platform to a non-Chinese company, or face a ban in the U.S. The bill received strong bipartisan support, with 197 Republican and 155 Democratic Representatives voting in favor of the bill, including all of Colorado’s Representatives.

ByteDance stands to rake in tens of billions of dollars by selling TikTok to non-Chinese owners, but it’s unclear how that would work for the globalized company. If ByteDance sells only its U.S. operations, then the app would be severed from its successful algorithm, which is built in Beijing. Former U.S. Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin has signaled interest in purchasing the platform, as have billionaire Frank McCourt and Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian businessman and “Shark Tank” judge, both of whom have put together investor groups willing to commit $20 billion to $30 billion for the company.

But ByteDance isn’t selling. It’s fighting.

Instead of pursuing sales talks, the company challenged the law in court. ByteDance claimed that the ban violates the First Amendment and alleged that Congress wants to ban the app because they don’t agree with its users’ increasingly political content.

In early December, the court ruled against ByteDance, upholding the Jan. 19 ban-or-sell deadline. Immediately after the ruling was issued, ByteDance asked for an injunction — essentially freezing the effect of the ban — until the Supreme Court can hear its First Amendment argument. The appeals court said no, but the Supreme Court said fine.

On Jan. 10, the Supreme Court will hold a special two-hour session to hear First Amendment arguments from both sides.

In some respects we’re back where we started, but we’ve also come a very long way. President-elect Trump — the person who kicked off the ban conversation four long years ago — is set to take office Jan. 20, the day after the potential ban takes effect. Trump, though, has since reversed his stance on the app.

In December, Trump hosted TikTok’s Singaporean CEO, Shou Chew, at Mar-a-Lago. In subsequent interviews, Trump acknowledged a “soft spot” for the app, owing in part to his nearly 15 million followers. Trump also has a contentious relationship with Facebook, and has said he would not want a ban to benefit TikTok’s competitors, namely Meta, which he has called an “enemy of the people.”

OK, we’re almost there. I mean here.

On Dec. 27, Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the ban so he could “save the platform,” according to a court filing.

“President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns expressed by the Government,” the filing reads.

Meanwhile, public support of a ban has crumbled to 32%, down from 50% in March 2023, according to a Pew Research report.

What does Colorado think about TikTok?

In 2021, Stalls hopped on his @pedestriandignity account to post a 57-second clip while he walked down the sidewalk near Sheridan Boulevard and West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood. He’d journeyed roughly two blocks from the bus stop to the grocery store when, in the middle of the block, the sidewalk ran straight into a fence, forcing whoever was walking into traffic. A small block of text appeared at the top of the screen:

“Send this to your State Transportation Department (In Colorado? Send this to CDOT)”

Stalls warned his audience to be safe when filming their experiences, then stepped into the four lanes of traffic speeding along Sheridan.

“The day after I posted that video I got an email from the state department,” Stalls said. “They were like, we just got 120 form submissions with your video. Want to go for a walk?”

“The day after I posted that video I got an email from the state department,” Stalls said. “They were like, we just got 120 form submissions with your video. Want to go for a walk?”

— Jonathon Stalls, @pedestriandignity on TikTok

In November, the Denver Regional Council of Governments launched a corridor safety study to examine the section of road Stalls posted from. (The study is open for submissions until April.) Stalls knows the study isn’t the direct result of his video, but he likes to think that kind of attention impacts municipal priorities.

Lehto also thinks her videos can have an indirect effect on official policy. She knows water managers follow and like her content. So even if she isn’t at the decision-making table, she can still be a worm in their ear, a thorn in their side.

“I desperately want young people to recognize that there are really important decisions being made about our water future right now, and their voices are not being incorporated,” Lehto said. “I felt like (TikTok) specifically was the best tool that I had at my disposal to reach those people.”

It’s not just about the intangible impact social media advocacy can have. Stall fields dozens of DMs from people who don’t drive, thanking him for his videos. He helped a regular collaborator, the late Phyllis Mack, land a $400,000 grant to improve the sidewalks in front of her senior housing complex. He was flown to Wisconsin by an AARP group to lead a mobility justice training for a community trying to install a roundabout. The AARP group found him on TikTok.

“That’s the ripple effect of filming raw, first-person, lived experience,” Stalls said. “There are so many people who are out there grinding everyday, getting up at 5 a.m. to catch the bus to get to work. They don’t have time to organize, to plan an event and coordinate a bunch of people. They can just pull their phone out and bring people into it. That’s the kind of permission I want people to experience with digital storytelling.”

With that in mind, Stalls thinks a ban would constitute a huge loss.

LEFT: An old Pedestrian Dignity stick stuck on a traffic signal to cross Colorado Boulevard. RIGHT: Jonathon Stalls shoots video for social media along the busy street. (Rebecca Slezak, Special to The Colorado Sun)

On the other hand, he’s quick to acknowledge the harms of an algorithm-driven life, and has trained himself not to get too lost in the platform’s performance metrics. Some videos that take hours to research and record reach a fraction of the audience that sees his quick, first-person rants. 

“I have to constantly revisit how I’m using it as a tool and not get my, not have my identity wrapped up in it,” he said. “The algorithm plays with how I engage or don’t engage in advocacy because I’m sharing all of it. There are some significant mental health aspects to all of social media.”

These mental health aspects have been the main focus for Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser.

At a Colorado Sun event in September, Weiser told the audience declining youth mental health is one of the most pressing issues facing Colorado today.

That’s why Weiser is co-leading a multistate investigation into how social media, including TikTok, negatively impacts the mental health of its users, particularly children and teens. In October, Weiser alleged that TikTok has been illegally withholding documents relevant to their investigation.

Though Weiser, who last week said he is running for governor, declined to comment on a potential ban because of the ongoing litigation, he has been outspoken about the need to protect teens from the worst effects of social media, including online bullying, and content that can lead to self-harm and suicide. At the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, Weiser announced a pool of $50,000 grants to help schools test smartphone strategies, and emphasized moving away from social media and toward building real-life connections.

Youth-led movements have also sprung up around the U.S. to help peers rethink their relationships to social media, and TikTok videos aching for ’90s nostalgia are going viral — mostly among Gen Z viewers.

“I was born in the wrong generation,” read a handful of comments. (Though some videos have a decidedly millennial/Gen X comment section, also pining for the ’90s).

The information economy

If TikTok is banned, there is certainly a lot of money to be lost. More than 7 million small businesses use TikTok accounts for marketing. Creators on TikTok can generate income a number of ways, including direct advertising (using their account to find clients), brand partnerships (using their account to promote goods and services), and TikTok’s own creator’s fund, a pool of money creators can apply for, which is distributed based on a user’s views and engagement.

But it’s more than just a way to bank big deals.

More than half of the platform’s users regularly turn to the app for news, according to a September report by the Pew Research Center. The platform came in third for the percentage of its users who rely on it for news, falling behind X in the top spot and Truth Social in second. 

Among younger age groups, the app plays a major role in news consumption and political content. Almost half of TikTok’s users ages 18-29 surveyed by Pew said they use the app to keep up with politics or political issues, and 52% of the age group said they use the app to get news, including breaking news. That’s compared with about a quarter of users over 65 who said they use the app for news or politics.

Meanwhile, 23% of Americans surveyed in a different study by Pew say they prefer to get local news through social media, closing in on those who prefer a news website (26%) or television (32%), and far outpacing print and radio outlets (9%).

For what it’s worth, the way social media shows up in Pew’s reports is analogous to the way they talked about the growing online news market in the late 1990s. Some of takeaways from those studies could easily be read into the current social media ecosystem; while timeliness and accuracy are important to news consumers, one report reads, “a large segment of the news audience wants entertaining and enjoyable news presented by personalities who deliver it in a caring way.”

Knowingly or not, TikTok has created a platform to deliver those “personalities” to their news audiences — but instead of media execs deciding who gets facetime, it’s left up to an algorithm which, at its most basic interpretation, is just a set of instructions that provide output based on input. And TikTok’s algorithm gets a lot of input from its users — from location data, to engagement with videos, to what the company calls “keyboard patterns,” or what a user is typing — which is part of why it’s been the subject of much study and much scrutiny. 

Some experts claim that TikTok’s algorithm is more nuanced than those of Meta or Google, and can pick out users’ specific vulnerabilities more efficiently than the other platforms. Others have said TikTok’s secret sauce isn’t the algorithm itself, but the vast amounts of data and the high user engagement TikTok amasses.

In other words, the algorithm isn’t in itself remarkable, but the setting TikTok has created to train it, is.

The same algorithm that can turn someone into an overnight success can also, just as swiftly, quash their viral dreams. Users can try to game the algorithm, but there is no reasoning with it. This isn’t lost on Lehto.

About a year and a half ago, Lehto realized TikTok was a great wave to ride, but one that eventually it would peter out. She’s spent time developing an audience on other platforms, like Instagram, and continues to find ways to partner with organizations that are important to her.

Ultimately, what worries Lehto about a potential ban doesn’t have to do with her own profile, but the way people will splinter to find the next best thing.

“It’s going to be a fight to the death to be the new app,” Lehto said. “We’re just going to see more of this shattering of the media landscape, where people are siloed into platforms that agree with them. What I’m scared about is the echo chambers that happen when you break up these big platforms.”

So what’s a Western water girl to do?

“At this point TikTok is just one avenue for me to get my message out,” Lehto said. “I’ll still be shouting into the void as long as I have a voice.”