BOONE, Iowa — All eyes are on what lawmakers in Washington will do next when it comes to the future of TikTok in America.
Former President Donald Trump's former treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, said he's interested in buying the social media platform. He said he's assembling a team of investors, to make a bid to buy it.
Mnuchin made the comments shortly after the U.S. House passed a bill to ban the Beijing-owned app if it doesn't sell to an American owner.
With more than 150 million Americans using the platform, TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps. But now, casual consumers and content creators might soon face a different reality.
After becoming a teen dad, Boone resident Cole Burge started sharing his family's life on TikTok.
"That's kind of how I ended up with the following I have now is from being a teen parent,” Burge said. “And then when I turned 18, I got my real estate license and decided to use the platform that I had to start marketing myself as a real estate agent."
Now, with more than four million likes and 150,000 followers, Burge is a successful creator sharing content about his business.
If TikTok were to be banned, he said many people like himself could lose out on business opportunities.
"The mass impact of that is that level of marketing and that reach is gone,” Burge said. “I mean, it's an entire platform that some people rely on."
Despite mass protests from TikTok users on the platform, many politicians all across the country are in favor of the bill.
All four of Iowa’s congress members supported the legislation.
"The big concern here is that unless TikTok divests from China, specifically, those folks in Beijing that lead the Communist Party, are really going to try and use this as a platform to change and manipulate minds here through propaganda efforts," said Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa.
Those claims of Chinese propaganda and TikTok’s addictive nature through personal algorithms are cited as reasons to ban the app.
"The primary goal, most of these platforms, is time on platform, so they're going to give you what you want, they're going to drive you in the direction that makes you stay and come back," said Iowa State University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and cybersecurity expert Doug Jacobson.
However, many people see the attempt to ban the app as an act of censorship.
"What this bill is going to do is it's going to impact the First Amendment rights of 170 million plus Americans that use the app every day for communication with friends and family, for sharing their views, for running their business, for really, almost everything nowadays," said Jenna Leventoff, Senior Policy Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.
President Joe Biden has stated if the bill passes out of the Senate and makes its way to his desk, he will sign it into law.
But Iowa State University Political Science Professor Mack Shelley said that could be a poor choice for the president.
"If he signs what effectively would be seen as a ban on TikTok, that's a really, really good way to either get younger voters not to show up at all and vote for Biden, or maybe to vote for third party candidates," Shelley said.
TikTok itself is getting political, calling on users to contact Congress and tell their representatives what TikTok means to them, with some users receiving a call-to-action message when they open the app.
There is no word yet on when the Senate might debate and vote on the bill.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2022 banned TikTok on all state-owned devices. It also prohibits state agencies from subscribing to or owning a TikTok account.