

As the deadline for the TikTok sale approaches, the San Francisco-based publishing platform Substack hopes to capitalize on the loss by releasing a short video feature in its app.
Creators will now be able to create TikTok-style videos in what was previously the Substack app’s Media tab. Videos can be up to ten minutes in length and like on TikTok, users can scroll until their hearts are content. The major difference is that Substack has a much smaller number of creators and the videos available might actually be useful rather than an assault on the human mind. Podcast interviews will also soon appear in the same feed.
About 17,000 creators post on Substack and the platform has close to 20 million monthly active subscribers, but finding who’s who has always been a problem. Multimedia seems like the natural stepping stone, with the company reporting that 82% of its top-earning creators are now using multimedia tools, up from about 50% this time last year.
What’s going to happen to TikTok is still in the air. In February, President Trump signed an executive order to delay the TikTok ban for 75 days. The app’s parent company, parent ByteDance Ltd., faces either selling its U.S. operations or receiving the ban. The new deadline in April 5.
Some names put forward so far as potential buyers have been Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp., although it’s still unclear who might step in and save the app. On Sunday, Trump told reporters that there are “a lot of potential buyers” and “tremendous interest in TikTok,” adding that he would “like to see TikTok remain alive.”
The President will surely face the scrutiny of the public if TikTok is taken away from U.S. users. There are currently about 170 million U.S. users and about 1.3 million Americans are creators, some of whom use it for business marketing and make money from content. An outright ban would turn into a small crisis for many users, despite other tech giants’ efforts to fill the TikTok space.
Trump acknowledged that China will play a major role in what happens, recently saying, “Maybe I’ll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done.”
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