What a Successful Creator Really Thinks About the TikTok Ban

As the clock ticks down toward a possible TikTok ban in the U.S., creators, brands, and fans alike are forced to confront a question that once felt hypothetical: What happens when your entire platform could disappear?

For Jessica Hawk, also known as @myteacherface—one of the app’s standout creators known for her teacher and child-free by choice content—the stakes go far beyond lost views. TikTok has been more than a digital stage; it’s been a career builder, a business engine, and a creative community all rolled into one. Now, with uncertainty looming, creators like @myteacherface are being asked to pivot quickly, think strategically, and reimagine what their future looks like—possibly without the very platform that launched them.

In this candid interview, @myteacherface talks about how she is approaching this high-stakes moment. We dig into her strategy for transitioning to other platforms, the ripple effects on brand partnerships and income streams, and how the creator economy might shift in the wake of a ban. She also reflects on the challenges and opportunities that come with moving a deeply engaged community to a new digital home—and what content creation might look like in a post-TikTok world for Americans.

This isn’t just a story about losing an app—it’s about navigating change in real time, staying creative under pressure, and finding new ways to thrive when governments and algorithms pull the rug out from under us.

Lilian Coral: So with that, I’d love to start a little bit by just hearing more from you, Jessica, about how you got into TikTok and if you ever really imagined making it into a full-on career.

Jessica Hawk (@myteacherface): Well, hello. And no, I never imagined at this point in my life in middle age that I would have a career online, but especially not on TikTok, which was introduced to me in 2019, pretty much as a teen app. And it was right before the pandemic when one of my students showed me a TikTok that he had made and he was thrilled that he got 100 views. And as somebody who had been on Vine, I saw that 100 views as a challenge. So I said, let me see what I can do. And so I did my first video. I got over 100 views, but it definitely didn’t go where I was hoping. So I just kept pushing. And at that time there were not many teachers on TikTok at all. And then the pandemic hit and everybody was on TikTok.

Coral: So what does an influencer actually look like from a day-to-day perspective?

Hawk: Now that I’m doing it full time—because I retired last June after 32 years of teaching—it’s a lot of pressure. I will say it’s definitely not as much pressure as teaching 150-plus teenagers every single day. But I do constantly have to consume media. I have to strategize. I have to create, and all of that takes time. I could have an idea for something when I wake up in the morning, I go to film it, and I find that it doesn’t go exactly as I planned. I might take a break. I’ll go consume some content to see what is trending at the time, what people are talking about. Then I’ll try to film again later. 

And then I also spend a good deal of my time, about two hours a day, responding to comments. Because I truly love being engaged with my audience, and I have many, many teachers and many women who are child-free by choice from all over the world who reach out to me. And so since I’m putting that information out there—it’s not that I feel a responsibility to respond to them. I feel a need to respond to them and I like interacting with them. So my day is pretty much online.

Coral: That’s super interesting because I know sometimes we talk about content creators as if it just naturally happens and you just pull out your phone and start doing the video. But you really are spending a full day, it sounds like, coming up with ideas, preparing, then taping, and then following up with your audience.

So within all of that, how exactly do you make a living from TikTok? Where does the money and exchange come from? And then perhaps you could start to tell us a little bit about how big of a role does the platform play in your income stream?

Hawk: Great questions, and this is something that TikTok is now starting to put the kibosh on with creators talking about how much they make. But I can say that I get paid by TikTok for videos that are performing well—that have a high watch rate. So we need somebody to watch for at least five seconds. And the longer they watch, the more we get paid. If they are following me, I get nothing for them watching it. It has to be somebody from the “for you page” or the FYP. And then if they actually make it to the end of the video, we see the analytics of that, that’s where I get paid the most. 

So it’s important to have a hook, to have those first five seconds be very engaging to keep them to that sweet spot and then to keep them for the longest time possible on the video. When all of those things line up, creators can make lots of money on videos, thousands a month, but then you can also have months where maybe your videos aren’t doing as well or they could be suppressed and you’re not making even $1000 dollars a month. But that’s one way that creators can make money on TikTok.

Another way is through TikTok shop—and the people who do TikTok shop are incredibly dedicated. The ones who make six figures, some of them making well into five figures per month, they produce three to five videos a day and they are constantly on the grind. It’s worth it, but I don’t have the bandwidth to do three to five videos a day with different products.

And then the last way that we can make money is through brand deals. So before I had a manager, I would get the brand deals coming in. I would negotiate, do the contracts, do all the filming, editing, and do all of that. Now I have a manager who will field the offers for me, but that’s hit or miss as well. I could have a month where I might have two brand deals and I could have another month where I don’t have any, but then I’ll have one that’s really big. And my issue is that I won’t do brand deals for things that I don’t actually believe in and use. So I could have thousands of dollars coming in a month, potentially, but I’m not going to promote something that I wouldn’t actually use.

Coral: So it’s almost like a whole corporation, really, that you’ve got going on. So given that, when you first heard about the potential ban, what was your immediate reaction, both personally and professionally?

Hawk: The immediate reaction was, how do I use my degrees to become either a professor or a college counselor in the college campus where I live, because I just know it’s such a good way to supplement my pension and keep me in my apartment, and living the life that I want to live—I knew I would have to supplement it if TikTok went away. So immediately I started downloading all of my content and making sure I had a master file of everything that I have created over the past four or five years. But because there were whisperings of this even before we had that short temporary ban at the beginning of this year, I actually jumped onto YouTube in September because I said, if this ban is going to come and go and come and go and we’re going to be hanging by a thread, I need to diversify.

So I went onto YouTube and I built a platform there. I’m almost at 100,000 on YouTube. I joined Substack. I have not put in time to start Substack yet. I preemptively saved my username for the Neptune app, which is supposed to be coming out soon, which is hopefully going to rival TikTok. But as somebody whose image is trademarked, for MyTeacherFace, my logo, I have to make sure that I secure it on all of these platforms and try to branch out as much as possible so if TikTok is gone, I can maybe get income from YouTube. And I also just recently started posting on Facebook in a MyTeacherFace account. I was hesitant to do that because Facebook can be a viper pit, but it does pay very well, I’m finding. So I have a lot of backups if TikTok does go away.

Coral: You really are like a corporation, and it’s really interesting because in the conversations about the TikTok ban, one of the major talking points is that the content creator community produces upwards of billions of dollars of GDP and income to the United States. And yet at the same time, we have this image of content creators, again, as sort of like people doing dances. But the reality is a vast array of individuals providing different kinds of content with a lot of backend support and overhead. And so clearly you are thinking about your business in the long term and making the appropriate transitions. 

Have you noticed, as you’re doing this, that there is an impact both on the business and the brand, since the law has been signed and since we’re moving towards a world in which the TikTok app itself won’t exist or maybe won’t be accessible in the U.S.? What has actually changed, if anything, in terms of partnerships, traffic, or engagement that you've seen?

Hawk: What happens with brands is that they can get a little bit skittish about where your content is going to go if certain things you did before are being suppressed or if your audience may be changing, if your content may be changing in order to not get a shadow ban or a violation, because violations happen very quickly now on TikTok. I got a violation in a comment for saying the word “ew.” E-W. I got a content violation. So we don’t really know where we stand in a lot of ways. So we’ve scaled back on what we’re saying. Now there are some bigger creators who have millions of people on their accounts and they have been absolutely kicked off the platform and then there’s a public outcry to bring them back. I’m talking like people with three, four million followers. But they talked about controversial issues and all of a sudden they were gone.

So we’re all kind of feeling that pinch, like when are we going to get demonetized? Because that’s another thing that can happen to us. If we get enough violations, we can be demonetized and can no longer make money from the creator fund. So we have to think about how we keep our content consistent with this new era of TikTok so that we’re still appealing to brands and appealing to the audience who followed us for very specific reasons.

It’s constantly in flux.

Coral: That’s interesting. You’ve mentioned the word suppressed a couple of times. And I don’t know that many of us in the general kind of audience really know about some of these changes that are happening on what I would call the backend, right? Suppression of content, shadow bans that you’re describing, changes who has access to the platform or not. 

Tell me more about the suppression if you can, what exactly is happening, and then how do you experience it as a content creator? Do you find out sort of through trial and error—you say “ew” and then you find out you’ve been penalized—or is there information that's being shared with you all that says, you can’t say the word “ew” anymore on TikTok. How does it work?

Hawk: So something as simple as saying “ew” or putting a puke emoji, you will get a notification in your creator area that says you have received a content violation. Here is the violation. If you would like to appeal, you can appeal. And so I appeal those all the time. But it does build up strikes. So if you happen to say a few things like “ew” or use a puke emoji, within a certain amount of time, then those strikes can build up to demonetization. And we’re starting to see more of that. 

A lot of us who have been creators on this app for a while and are friends with each other, we’ll do what are called friends-only videos, where it’s  just people who follow you and you follow back. And we talk about the changes that have happened this year with what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. And we’re trying to figure out what those rules are because they’re not really clear. And so there have been times where I will put out a couple videos about being child free by choice or being a woman who enjoys living on her own and being unmarried. And then I’ll notice for about two weeks, my videos that normally got 100,000 views, 500,000 views, are getting 1,000 or 5,000. That will just go through, and I’ll look at all of my videos in a time period and I’m like, I'm being suppressed, I’m being shadow banned right now. It has never lasted longer than two weeks. But every morning I can check my revenue for the month and I can see a drastic drop off in those two weeks.

Coral: That’s so fascinating. We’ve been seeing from our perspective and sort of the public interest community that, especially early on, you couldn’t search for certain terms. But this level of just much more specific care and focus on particular words and particular content, I don't know that that's been as visible. 

So what’s sort of the vibe and the energy within the content creator community on TikTok right now—one, to this experience you’re having, but two, is there a collective response to the ban? How are you all experiencing this moment as you're talking, you know, only amongst friends?

Hawk: So as we talk, we will talk to each other about the fact that I will have people who comment on my videos—it’s been happening a lot this week—will say “I haven’t seen you on my FYP in forever. Glad to have you back.” And I’m like, well, I’ve been here the whole time. And then I will have some people I've been friends with on TikTok for a long time who I haven't seen for almost a year. And they pop up like “did you take a hiatus?” No, I’m creating content every day. 

So there’s something going on with the algorithm where we’re getting some content but not others. We talk in our group about who has a video suppressed, what was in it. Videos that normally had like 1 million views for somebody got 10,000, and that was over two weeks. So we’re trying to look, but there’s no pattern, really. There’s no rhyme or reason. But I do know personally, if I do too much content about being child free by choice recently—before this year I was fine with it—I will then get a week or two where they pump the brakes.

Coral: So what does that then say to you about the future of content creation? Maybe particularly in this platform, but what does that also make you think about other platforms like this? Where you really, it sounds like, are dependent on this algorithm without much ability to fight back, if you will, or you just have to change your content and change your content strategy. How does that make you feel about this work moving forward?

Hawk: I absolutely love the work that I do. So that’s why I started looking at other outlets. And about two months ago, I did get demonetized after having no content violations. I just got a notification that says you are out of the creator program. And I was absolutely shocked. I screenshotted it, and sent it to my boyfriend, who’s a lawyer. And I was like, I don’t think there’s anything I can do about this, but what does this mean? And I said, I have no violations. When I did the check, it said, your account is in good standing. And after I appealed it three times, I got back in. 

So that was a wake-up call for me. And that happened to a lot of people I know. It was a wake-up call for all of us to say, save your content. Go to other avenues. Some people are creating their own websites where they will maybe do a paywall—a $2 or $3 a month subscription to watch their videos. Some people are definitely going to Substack. Some people have gone to Bluesky. And so we’re all saying, this is not what it was. It’s different.

We’re trying to navigate these changes, but it just doesn’t have the same feel that it did when we first started. And everything changes, but without a rhyme or reason or a clear set of guidelines to how you can be demonetized or get violations, it’s very tough to continue the enthusiasm. So YouTube has been very, very good for that because I can say what I need to and respond to the comments without any, you know, arbitrary violations.

Coral: It seems like when the ban was upon us, there was a huge wave of content creators on TikTok who were really advocating and being vocal about not banning the platform. Would you say that that energy has really shifted and it’s just folks now really trying to find what their life after TikTok is and what the future platform is?

Hawk: Well, I will tell you that people’s memories are short, and a lot of people don’t even know about, you know, the three months type of thing. We think it’s going to be extended again, and probably in perpetuity, but I just think it’s a way to tell everybody, this can go away, you know? So it’s a way to almost keep us on our toes to recognize that we are just working for TikTok. We are just putting our content there. We don’t really have control over it. 

So, it’s definitely something where people were saying, we have to keep this. I especially felt for the people who use this as their sole income. And single moms, especially, who learned that their videos were resonating with other people and they were making money off of TikTok, also off of TikTok shop, and were able to buy a home, get a safe car, and provide for their kids—listening to them say, if this goes away, that’s my income. Don’t do this for whatever reason you say, whether it’s safety, whether it’s data—and we haven’t heard that much about those issues recently. So they [say], “Please don’t do this to us because I am putting money back into the economy because I now have money to save and then spend.” And that’s the part I think is so shortsighted is that we now have people who are becoming independently wealthy on social media, especially on TikTok. And they are contributing to the consumerism that is so loved, and they are buying, and they are in the marketplace more than they ever could have been before they made income on TikTok.

Coral: Yeah, I’m curious about that. A lot of this conversation has been at the policy level. Policymakers and ByteDance really going back and forth around how the company structures the kind of data that they access, who they share it with, etc. From your perspective, what do you wish policymakers really understood about creators on TikTok? And really the social media space that you’re navigating, because it’s not just TikTok. You’re describing at least two, three, other major platforms in the U.S. What are some of the things you wish they really kept in mind as they continue to navigate this regulatory space?

Hawk: I honestly wish they understood what TikTok was. And when I was watching the hearings the first time and the questions that were coming from some of the lawmakers, I was flabbergasted. They truly had done no research on social media in general, but especially not on TikTok and had so many bits of misinformation. I’m going to hope it wasn’t disinformation that was given to them, [that] it was misinformation that was given to them. But they themselves had not been on TikTok. They themselves did not understand what was on the platform. 

I forget who it was, somebody 70 or 80, who was saying, you know, it’s teenagers dancing around. And I’m like, sir. I am 55 years old. I am talking to younger teachers about how to set themselves up. And it was just so obvious that they were making policy on something that they knew nothing about, and had time to learn, and chose willful ignorance.

Coral: What else do you think they [mis]understood? To your point, I think a lot of the general kind of audience that isn’t on TikTok—although there’s [maybe] hundreds of millions of Americans who are on it, so a lot of us do understand it—but for those of us who don’t, we do presume that it is a bunch of teenagers doing dance videos, and it really is not that. So, what else about our society and the way that we are navigating platforms do you wish we all understood a bit more? As we’re trying to navigate this space where we want safety for children, and for everybody, both in the way that people are engaging with each other and the way that other countries are able to use these platforms to share information (or misinformation, or disinformation). We all want that. But what do you wish more of these legislators understood about how the platform really works and what would keep us safe, in regards to the way that people are engaging with each other?

Hawk: So as far as how the platform works, I think they need to understand that it is the town square of the modern age. And this is where we connect with each other. This is where we share life stories with each other. This is where we share recipes and art and music. And we come together in a way that you just have never been able to do before I would say on any other platform, because my audience is international as well. And the age ranges are different. My mother is 82 years old and we share TikToks back and forth every day. And it’s amazing what connects all of us. 

So with that being said, with 170 million people [monthly in the U.S.]—[that] might’ve gone up by now—using TikTok, there are some safety concerns. And whoever is at the helm, we hope would have an interest in suppressing disinformation. And we don’t see that. We don’t see that happening. We see quick little sound bites from people giving completely the opposite information of what is happening in government and what is happening in policy. And their videos get hundreds of thousands of views, if not millions. And when somebody like me will go back and say, well, actually, no, and here is the source for this, and I always give sources, my video gets 1,000 views. So I would hope that we could have some regulation somewhere in there to say even a little content thing, “this has not been verified,” “these facts have not been vetted,” something. Because we are in truly a dystopian time, a la 1984 of the Ministry of Truth running amok, as far as anybody putting out anything at any time without guardrails.

Coral: It definitely seems like the onus is on us, the individuals, to either question the thing that we’re seeing or, as you described, go back and try and find a source. And that is definitely something that a lot of the platforms could do more about and invest in. 

Turning the conversation a bit on why you do this and what brings you into the work. What gives you hope about the content creation community? Where do you feel [are] the bright spots? It just feels like we’re either talking about kids who are doing TikTok videos, or we’re talking about really heavy, negative things online. You talked a little about, “this is the town square of the modern age,” sharing TikToks with your mom. What are the kinds of things that you see happening on the platform, TikTok or otherwise, that give you hope that this is still the right direction for us to be navigating in?

Hawk: I can tell you, I usually will go to my following feed first to see what people I follow have said, when I get up in the morning and I do the comments and then I’ll go to my following feed. But I always love to go to the FYP and I love to see videos that have been just released or maybe have 10 views. And it’s somebody, you know, playing a ukulele, and I love to give them encouragement, give them a like and give them a comment and say, “keep it up, great work.” Or somebody did a painting and it might not be a Picasso, but great, they’re showing their work. They’re putting themselves out there. They’re being vulnerable. And this is something I never would have seen unless we had this platform. And I’m able to encourage them.

One kid was trying to improve his public speaking and he was doing a video a day. And there were about 100 of us who joined with him, and every day he said, please give me advice. And they were all women my age, pretty much. We were on there saying, go for it. Now look at the camera and make sure you do X, Y, and Z. So that’s the thing that gives me hope. And there are so many young people who are getting on the app, who are becoming advocates, not only for themselves, but also for their generation. And I love to see their advocacy and encourage it.

Coral: That’s great to hear. I’m curious what you think about AI. As someone obviously who is generating all of your content, doing all this work to look up for ideas, how do you see AI and generative AI really changing the game for you? And are you using AI tools to try and develop your content?

Hawk: No, so here’s the thing that really kind of gets me is that the good thing about TikTok is that they are rewarding creators who have original content. So people who are using AI to create videos might get a lot of views, but they’re probably not going to get monetized because it’s AI. It’s not original content. So for someone like me, I am trying to keep my voice and keep everything that I have so that I can be one of the people that people can look to and say, it’s not AI. I hope there are many, many of us who will hold the line as long as we can. 

But I’ve also seen some AI-generated content, especially in videos, that are so clever. And I don’t know what the person put into the AI to create that. I don’t know what prompt was used. But it makes me nervous because, did they actually write a really good prompt to get the AI to do that? Or is AI so good now that all they had to do was say, put a person on a bike in a storm and add this music? I don’t know. I haven’t explored it that much. As a teacher, I was very happy to retire last year as AI was coming into the classroom more and more. And students were using it more and more. So it’s definitely coming into play. I’m trying to stay out of it.

Coral: You’re trying to keep the human element to be the value add, if you will. Well, that’s wonderful and rewarding to hear. I also feel optimistic about humanity retaining, you know, our edge over AI to the degree that we can, but also very tech-forward. 

Last question for you. As you see the future, it sounds like you’re optimistic that TikTok will remain in some form or another. Sounds like there’s definitely some areas where the platform can improve. But what are you hoping to see in like six to 12 months just as a content creator? If you could get your wish and just create some level of stability on this question of is TikTok ending or not, what are you hoping to see?

Hawk: I would love to see a truly informed discussion among lawmakers and people who use TikTok, where everybody understands what TikTok is, understands what technology is. Because I think there can be some very good conversations when we talk about how this can improve the lives of people—especially if we’re talking about income, if we’re talking about connectivity. 

But we also always have to be cognizant of the age of people on the platforms because I really think 13 is even too young with the way that they are so heavily influenced by these highly edited images of celebrities and influencers, and the fact that they think they can be an influencer and fly around the world first class. I think there needs to be a real reality check with younger people especially. I know the [minimum allowed] age is 13. I still think that’s too young for the apps. 

Coral: That’s wonderful. I mean, I think as you’ve described it, content creation is not just a fad—it’s a real job. There’s a ton of work that goes into being able to make money off of existing on the platforms. I love the idea of being informed and engaged in this discussion. Technology is what we make of it. And if we want to have a truly thriving digital future, we’re all going to have to kind of get our hands into the mix and try to really mold a social media ecosystem that benefits all of us. 

Thank you so much for the time, Jessica. Thank you for your insights. We really appreciate it and hope that this has shed some light for some of our audience about what’s going on on the platform.

Hawk: I loved being here. Thank you so much for having me!

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