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  • 🚩 TikTok Whistleblower, Goodbye Anthpo, YouTuber Faces 20 Years, & More

🚩 TikTok Whistleblower, Goodbye Anthpo, YouTuber Faces 20 Years, & More

TikTok is in hot water yet again after allegations of the CCP, dataleaks, and more surface; Anthpo says goodbye to us, and his YouTube channel; YouTuber who crashed plane faces 20 years, and more. This week in creator economy news:

Author

Luke Himmelsbach
May 17, 2023

Happy Wednesday!

I’ve been writing this newsletter for 43 weeks now, and I gotta say, it’s been an absolute blast. If you’re a consistent reader, thank you for coming back every week, and if you’re new here, welcome in! Sharing this newsletter goes such a long way, so if you enjoy this read, consider sending it to a friend! 😎✌️

TikTok: CCP, Whistleblowers, Data Leaks & More 🚩

It’s not looking too good for TikTok after word broke from disgruntled employee.

In recent news, a former employee of TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the company for wrongful termination after claiming that he was fired for not participating in “efforts to skirt legal and ethical lines.”

Now, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, says that these statements are outdated and untrue, but regardless, this will absolutely spell trouble for TT. Let’s break down the deets below:

  • A former employee has filed a lawsuit claiming that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) accessed TikTok’s U.S. user data.

  • This employee also claims that ByteDance utilized TikTok and its Douyin (China’s version of TT) to run propaganda campaigns against Japan and Hong Kong.

  • One of the most major callouts in this series of events is the former employee claiming that the CCP established a unit called “The Committee,” that checked in on ByteDance to ensure it adhered to the parties ideologies.

  • As stated in a copy of the complaint shared by CNN, “The Committee maintained supreme access to all the company data, even data stored in the United States.”

  • This employee also claims that it does not matter where servers are located (in regard to moving TT servers to Texas in ‘Project Texas’), the CCP has a backdoor to this data.

It’s important to note that the individual making these claims only worked with ByteDance for a year between 2017 & 2018, so this may be a bit of sensationalism and people running with a headline rather than diving deeper into the story.

Regardless if these accusations are true or not, TikTok will absolutely have major issues with the U.S. gov, and this may even be the beginnings of a potential ban.

What do you creators think about this? Is this all sensationalism, or is there a credible concern here? Let me know by replying to this email!

Bye, Anthpo 😔❤️

YouTuber and overall silly guy, Anthpo has officially ended his channel after four years, 144 videos, and 1.65M+ subscribers.

While it all began in his high school days, by harassing people with fat Yoshi, Anthony Po has since gone through his college journey, capturing all of the fun and liveliness along the way.

But as someone who has amassed hundreds of millions of views across his YouTube content, it’s interesting to find that Anthpo is not so sure what to do next. Maybe that thing isn’t content creation at all, but a regular job.

Regardless, Anthpo’s channel is a fantastic look into the idea of “creating for the sense of creativity.” Anthpo’s videos were always a bit odd or wacky, but you could tell they were a blast to film, and it was put together not for “optimization” but rather to just capture and tell a story about a moment in time.

Anthpo’s content, and his exodus from his channel, remind me of the early days of YouTube where people were creating with friends and putting out content just for the sake of getting your creativity out into the world.

While Anthpo’s channel is coming to a close, I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ll see of him and his antics!

Creator Economy News 🚨

This week in the creator world, YouTuber faces prison time, Illinois proposes a bill for influencers to pay kid-creators, Twitch is driving users to Shorts instead of TikTok, MatPat has a Broadway show, and more!

You should see these 👀

Creator Spotlight 🔦

Angel & Z are a duo based out of New York who host a podcast that interviews some of the biggest names in NYC graffiti.

As a New Yorker who is obsessed with graffiti, this podcast has been such an incredible look into the lives of the writers who litter New York with their names. On buildings, signs, mailboxes. In alleys, under bridges, high spots, low spots.

Seeing their name everywhere always left me with a sense of awe and wonderment, but the veil gets lifted a bit with Angel & Z’s show, and makes these infamous individuals a little bit more “real,” if that makes any sense.

Angel & Z have done a killer job at finding their audience, and leveraging them to make this show their full time job. With a popping Patreon, merch lines including graffiti supplies and work with other big name artists, Angel & Z not only create killer content, but have figured out how to make a sustainable business out of it.

If you’re looking to get in the know about the most prolific names on the streets of New York, and the world, definitely check out this show. It’s insanely interesting!

Keep sayin it and sprayin it, Angel & Z! ✌️

Want to go even further? 🚀

If you’d like to keep learning about topics like the ones shared above, stick around! But more importantly, check out the links below to further your development as a creator. 😎