• by Kevin Ryan , April 15, 2025

As TikTok fights for its future in the U.S., its public relations campaign is in full swing. Commercials, testimonials, and upbeat case studies all push a central idea: small businesses depend on TikTok to survive.

It's a compelling message — and a fundamentally flawed one. This is not a celebration of entrepreneurship. It's exploitation, plain and simple.

TikTok is selling dependency as progress. But dependency, by definition, is a liability. Saying a business thrives because of TikTok is like saying alcoholics thrive on alcohol. It's not a healthy relationship — and certainly not sustainable.

Any business school grad will tell you: relying on a single platform for visibility, revenue, or growth is a strategic dead end.

TikTok encourages that dependency, then monetizes it. That's not innovation. That's entrapment.

One recent ad features the line: “Seven million businesses rely on TikTok to compete.”

Let's set aside whether that number holds up. The commercial showcases a diverse set of entrepreneurs, starting with a boutique coffee shop called Café Emporos. According to the ad, the shop racked up $25,000 in sales and 36,000 visitors, all thanks to TikTok.

What the ad doesn't mention is where the traffic came from or whether it's sustainable. Dig deeper and the shop's other platforms have not kept up. TikTok shows about 43,000 followers, while Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram) hover at around 3,500 combined.

YouTube and Twitter? Just 78 and 58 followers, respectively — and neither has seen updates in years. Much of the content is about the campaign itself: media coverage of the event that created the buzz.

TikTok also funded a $200,000 grant program in 2023 through the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. Café Emporos received $5,000. A generous gesture? Maybe. But with TikTok's U.S. ad spend estimated at $500 million that year, the grant program represents just 0.04% of budget. That's not corporate citizenship. That's marketing ROI.

This pattern is familiar: fund a campaign, give it a community angle, then use the spotlighted businesses to generate media coverage and brand goodwill. Meanwhile, the businesses themselves are often left with little infrastructure to support growth beyond the platform. It's a short-term sugar high dressed up as success.

Government support isn't faring much better. In New Jersey, a post-COVID business relief effort offered $4 million in marketing grants. But only seven consultants were authorized to distribute it statewide. The process was buried in red tape and fine print. Even consultants could not charge enough to justify the bureaucracy.

If TikTok and others truly wanted to help small businesses, they would offer education, not dependency, training on how to diversify channels, and guidance on scaling and hiring, as well as basics like building a napkin business plan, or knowing when to stop chasing viral hits and start building resilience.

The companies that survive won't be the ones that go viral once. They will be the ones that know how to thrive across platforms, with or without algorithmic favor.

True empowerment isn't building a business on TikTok. It's building one that can survive without it.  Financial independence is the only real independence — in business and in democracy. Tech platforms should stop selling dependency as progress. And we should stop buying it.