DadMode: Parenting, Gaming, Streaming, Life
"DadMode" is a podcast where two gaming-loving dads discuss everything from live streaming to fatherhood in a humorous and relatable way. Join Josh aka Moorph and Bearded Nova as they share gaming adventures and parenting anecdotes, offering a unique blend of entertainment and insight for fellow gamers with kids.
DadMode: Parenting, Gaming, Streaming, Life
TikTok's Death and Resurrection: The Ban That Wasn't
Josh aka Bearded_Nova
I'm from Australia and am what you would call a father who games. I have 5 kids so not as much time to game as I used to. But I still game and stream when I can. So come join me on Twitch in chat as we chill out.
Business Inquiries: Bearded-n0va@aussiebb.com.au
Josh aka Moorph
I'm a US-based husband and father of two boys. I work full-time and have been a content creator since 2000. I'm a YouTube partner, Twitch and LiveSpace streamer who founded a content creation coaching company called Elev8d Media Group (elev8d.media). I'm a blogger, streamer, podcaster, and video-er(?).
Business Inquiries: josh@elev8d.media
Turning off normal human male mode. Switching to dad mode. Welcome in to dad mode With your hosts Bearded, Nova and Morph.
Speaker 2:So we had an episode a little while ago where we talked about the potential TikTok ban. Was it going to happen? Was it not? It happened.
Speaker 3:But briefly talking about the potential tiktok ban wasn't gonna happen, but was it not? It happened. But briefly, yeah, I I call it the the jesus moment for tiktok, where it was killed and then resurrected the next day, like, and it's funny because, like I like to me, I find it funny because the whole point of the tiktok ban was around china stealing information from everyday american citizens like they really give a shit. And then the alternative that everyone tend to migrate to was another chinese app.
Speaker 2:Yeah, red, no like yeah just it was.
Speaker 2:It's. It's hilarious. I mean you're absolutely right, like the worrying about people making stupid dancing videos and what is china going to do with with that information? But the the ban was was funny. Leading up to it, like I was all over tiktok the day or two before every creator I they know was like leaving goodbye messages and posting, um, yeah, all their drafts and follow me here, follow me there, and at midnight it'll be gone. But it was gone at like 11. It was gone like an hour and a half early yeah, okay okay.
Speaker 2:And then I went and I'm like, well, I guess that's it, I guess it's done. So I I started using red note. I deleted the tiktok app yep, because I'm like it's guess that's it, I guess it's done. So I I started using red note. I deleted the tiktok app yep, because I'm like it's okay on oh, when it came, when it came back, I can't re-download it because it's still blocked on the app store that's, that's what I was about to say.
Speaker 3:Apparently, they blocked the app. Both apple and google removed it from the app store for these regions. Yeah, yep, so, but, but, but you're on android. So the beautiful thing about android is you could just download the apk off the internet and install it, right I can, I, I get. I'm wary of that okay, sometimes understandable, but you know in it.
Speaker 2:I'm looking at it as you know what. I don't mind a break from tiktok. Yeah, I don't. I don't mind it. Do I miss it a little bit? Sure, but I'm not waking up every morning grabbing my phone and seeing what's on tiktok well, that makes it okay, that's it.
Speaker 3:That just makes it even more interesting for me, since the band right and everyone coming back, a lot of your videos in particular, are getting repushed. My videos, yeah, you've been popping up on my feed a lot, some of your older content and stuff. Like that. I'm like hold on. At first I'm like, is this new stuff you come back with? Like a tiktok band, like yes, energy, I'm into tiktok then. Then I realized no, it's some of your older videos.
Speaker 2:But yeah, there, it's like they deleted all your content and then they're republishing everyone's content again yeah with the service coming down and back up yep, that's interesting because I obviously I literally haven't logged on since, since the ban, because I can't get back in. Yeah, when I try to look at it on the web, it keeps forcing me to try to download the app, which I can't, and then, okay, the experience is not the same, like it keeps crashing and and whatnot the other hilarious thing that came out of this tiktok band my wife brought it up to me was the, the farewell trend, I guess.
Speaker 3:Did you hear about this trend? Yeah, where goodbye. So long blah, blah but but no, no, no, the coming up with their confessions, influencers coming up with their confessions.
Speaker 3:And to meencers coming up with their confessions and to me, to one. There was a lot of people crying about how their livelihood's gone. Blah, blah, blah. There's never going to be anything. The US government wrecked their life. Fucking.
Speaker 3:Do not commit to one app. I don't know. We've talked about this ages ago. We've talked about this way before. We even did this stuff. Never commit to one app.
Speaker 3:Like, you should be publishing your tiktoks up on youtube shorts and in facebook, instagram, keeping your content in multiple directions, because you shouldn't invest all your eggs into one basket. Obviously, yeah, but a lot of these influencers the ones that had been making money or had been a larger following on tiktok decided to start using a Family Guy clip to come up with their confessions. A lot around their content and how their content was full of shit. A lot of people were feeling I haven't seen the one. One of the ones my wife brought up was a lady who's been showing about lots of exercises to work on getting the perfect ass, because she has this ass and all these people have been following along with her exercises. Yeah, turned out, none of her exercises did anything. She actually got butt implants before the account, really, but everyone was following her, thinking that they're going to get an ass like her from following her exercises.
Speaker 3:Another one, another influencer was around making special ice cubes like really fancy ice cubes with bits and pieces in it, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, turned out she never actually used any in her drinks. She never would Really, just some like yeah, confessions of you know, I didn't actually lose weight from this exercise. I've been using, I've had surgery for this or I've been using a Zempec A lot of things that people were following thinking it was real. Turns out at the last minute these influencers have just, you know, popped the balloon and gone. Hey, yeah, no, it's all fake. Yeah, how do you come back from that?
Speaker 3:like now you know your tiktok was gone for what 12 hours and you're back like how do you address this to your?
Speaker 2:to you. It was one of the creator I followed and he never showed his face. And he goes. I got something to you know to admit, and he showed, did a face reveal. Okay, you know, with that fun, and then it's back outside. Obviously I can't go back right now and see what, what happened with that, but it's pretty funny yeah you know, how do you, how do you come back from this?
Speaker 3:you know, I'm gonna go over one right here now monroe. She was maddie monroe. She was famous for attempting a tiktok challenge where she accidentally set her hair on fire. Oh shit, yep, she was fine, but the video certainly got tons of views, heaps of attention, you know, created this massive thing. Her confession was that she lit her fire on her hair on fire on purpose, on purpose.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know all these people thought it was, you know, accident. You know being fooled for five, six years following these curators, where all of a sudden that is coming out and I feel like it's. It shows a bit of the truth of the internet, what it's really like. You know what I mean. It's not always what you see. The influencer lives. People may think that they're earning so much money and they're doing this and doing that. Do not believe it. It's all face value. You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean, it is Even the influencers that were making money, I imagine I don't believe they were making a real living off of it. It probably just supplemented their regular income, or maybe they were a stay-at-home parent or something, and so it gave them a little extra cash.
Speaker 3:I don't know, but I think some were. But then there's, you know, I think we've talked about it and we've seen it in the past where creators have gone full-time on on twitch or they're going full-time streaming, but their income for full-time streaming is relatively low. They need they, you know the needs of that income is relatively low. They don't actually need to be making that much. So as much as they can say I'm going full, you know, I've gone full time on twitch, right, it's not costing them that much to do it right, they're, they're they.
Speaker 2:Maybe they have a partner who's actually paying all the bills and has been paying the bill.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm living in my parents basement and I don't plan on ever leaving home type effect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah now if my kid said that I'd get on in their chat like, yeah, you are, you're leaving home, but I'm gonna happen yeah, where do you think this uncertainty with TikTok's going Like?
Speaker 3:I know it's back, but it's not safe 100%.
Speaker 2:It's not, and it's interesting. So the new US president was the person who first touted the idea of getting rid of it, because he didn't like that people were basically organizing on there and causing mayhem for him, yeah. But now that he's elected he's like like it's not that big of a deal. You know what kind of? In fact he said the other day what kind of data they're really getting from people.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's what that's what I've been saying since the start. What are they really? Are they really that interested in you that there's not? There's not that much interesting data that you can get from someone off tiktok.
Speaker 2:Let's be honest there isn't, like you most likely won't get someone's real name unless they put it out there on purpose and then they know it's out there. You're probably not going to figure out where people live. You can lose geolocation potentially, but I don't think they make it that big of a deal, like I'd never give my actual location, but I've given enough hints. You can probably just figure it out. It's not like I'm really hiding anything, but it's like what are you really going to?
Speaker 3:get? Do you really think that corporate businesses are going to be creating conversations businesses, you know, conversations in private information that they don't want out in public? Are they really going to be using tiktok as a platform to shoot those dms to each other?
Speaker 2:no, no, no, there's no chance. In fact, like most companies, you'd get in trouble if you try to do that exactly, there's this.
Speaker 3:There's nothing in harm's way that tiktok could really do that hasn't already been done by facebook, instagram, twitter. You know, youtube, youtube guarantee.
Speaker 2:Google's got way more you on you than china will ever have on you absolutely, because, like like anyone else, I you pick an ecosystem right and I picked google, so they know everything they know.
Speaker 3:They know me better than I know myself.
Speaker 2:I feel at times I think you're right, I think, but so it's uncertain what's going to happen with a ban? Tiktok has has reopened their servers. App stores are still shut down. The law is still the law. It hasn't been hasn't been changed and even if the there's an executive order from the president, that doesn't really mean anything, because you can't use an executive order to change a law. So they're either have to repeal the law or they have to find another buyer, or it's going to get shut down again, like this. I don't know that this is a permanent unlock for it.
Speaker 3:I guess the hardest part, and an interesting point I think it was the president that mentioned it. You know, by tiktok to be owned, 50 by a us company, by us, the china yeah, china and two percent. You know as much as you go into how much china actually has of tiktok and then us is. But how do you evaluate this business? Because with the us it's worth so much, without the us it's worth a different value. Yeah, who's, who's, who's realistically willing to front that money right?
Speaker 2:right it's, and I for a while I wonder why was tiktok even worried about it? Like it's okay, we dropped the us, but I think the us was supplying a lot of income to the app. You know, I think there was a lot of purchases from the us, so that'sa big hit, and so to them is. Is it worth starting to split things 50 with the us? Like what do they get? Do they get 50 of the revenue? Do they get to own half the servers?
Speaker 3:half the data just insight.
Speaker 2:Insight into, yeah, into the data, like what do you really get for a 50 ownership? Yeah, like that's what it is which tiktok said they would never sell because it's always been about whatever it's. The algorithm that makes them, makes it what it is, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Special algorithm, you know it's the it's the K, it's the KFC of the social media, which it's 11,000 sponsors.
Speaker 2:It is. It is Exactly so. When it got banned, we mentioned before, a lot of people were going to red note, which mentioned before, a lot of people were going to red note, which trended and had like 30 million downloads or something like that in like a short period of time, yeah. And then the us was like, well, we're gonna ban that now too, but but almost nobody was really going over to more. Back to facebook and instagram, and in fact, it was a big trend to delete facebook and instagram and twitter off your phones, which I also did, yes, and I don't miss them either. I really don't miss them either.
Speaker 3:One of the other ones was I had the red one and then there was Lemon something. There was another one Lemonade.
Speaker 2:Which is owned. It's owned by ByteDance, owned by TikTok.
Speaker 3:It blew my mind. I just could not understand. Hold on. The whole point about China is guys, why are we going to move to another Chinese app? Point about china is. Guys, why are we going to move to another chinese app it's going to face if this ban went through 100, that app would be the next target. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:it just moves straight to the next target, that's yep, I think that the us, if they really want, they could remove tiktok from the list of comp apps or whatever companies that this, at this law is, is overseeing. However, for anyone that's listening understand, the law that was passed wasn't specifically about tiktok. It was about it basically said any app that is not owned and run in the us can be banned. Yes, so while they may remove tiktok from this, just remember any single application you use on your phone or wherever, if it's not run by us company out of the us, it could be banned at any time, because that's what this law does yeah, yeah, I mean, look at that.
Speaker 3:Look at it's. In a way it's slightly different, but we've got the social media ban for minors under 16. It's in a way that, you know, none of the social media platforms are actually owned by an australian company in any way. But we've turned around and said, well, you are going to do something for us. This is what you're going to do. Yeah, you know, the government can. The government can do what the government wishes. You just live inside it, you just put up with it.
Speaker 2:Really, I would say, yeah, that's. That's pretty much it. I'm curious to see what the short-term or medium-term fallout's going to be from this, if there's others that have kind of enjoyed their break from social media like I have, or if people are just going to get right back into what they were doing, or if they're going to be smart and start to divest where their content is now instead of keeping it one place, like Nova was mentioning. I hope there's a lot to be learned. I think I question if anyone's actually gonna heed any of those lessons or if they're just gonna fall right back to the same traps they were in I I say, fall back into the same traps they're in.
Speaker 3:I dare say most of the people, like we're talking at the start of this episode, will be doing massive apologies, trying to to call back. I mean, how do you come back, especially if you did have any sponsorship to a degree or people were paying you to advertise? I think you've lost those people. I really do think you've lost endorsements, sponsorships, moving forward. You have to find a whole new avenue, but I don't see them going to another platform. They either shut up and they just don't come back at all and just you know, oh crap, I don't want to ever face the public over this. You know, hot, two girl ways where she's just disappeared into the neither.
Speaker 3:Thank god, thank god for now she'll be back and or they, yeah, diverse, which is probably something they're not going to have, especially if you, if you've got a creator that's that's divulging and coming out with all this information spilling the beans.
Speaker 2:As such, you're not smart enough to to diverse your content, obviously yeah, yep, when I was really into content creation and I had a pretty good size tiktok following and whatnot, I was on all the apps but tiktok was by far the one that drove stuff to my other platforms like not even close. When I was doing sponsorships, people would sponsor me to do promos for them on tiktok. They didn't even want to touch the other platforms I was on, just because they're not. They weren't what you know they were looking for. So I I think if people who may have lost the sponsorships, you may have a hard time getting it back because a company's gonna be like well, do I really want to invest a lot more money in this when I'm not sure what's going to happen with it? You know what I mean, I think everything's kind of messy.
Speaker 3:You mean similar to Adpocalypse. Remember Adpocalypse Of YouTube era where lots of people were pulling their ads from YouTube saying, well, we don't want our ads to be affiliated with these people, yeah, and Twitter too, having.
Speaker 2:Twitter yeah, affiliated with these people yeah they just and twitter too. Having twitter, the companies are like nah, we're good, we don't, we don't want to advertise in your stupid platform, but that's you know it's, it's.
Speaker 3:I guess all social media platforms go through this period, though I can't think of a social media platform that hasn't had a hiatus from the advertisement, because really advertisement is what pays these platforms to survive most of the time it's you know that's. That's where the money is. Every social media platform goes through an adpocalypse to a degree. Yep, it's full out and personally it's back.
Speaker 2:Personally, I believe that tiktok, while it's sort of back, I actually think it's going to go away again. I think that there's going to be a lot of lobbying from Google, from YouTube, other folks, to really push, keep the ban in place. Because even if people are not going back to those apps the way they were before, still having less competition from TikTok makes their lives a lot easier. Apps the way they were before, still having less competition from tiktok, makes their lives a lot easier, makes the ads they put out there more expensive to the companies that are purchasing them. So I don't think tiktok's gonna be back for long do you think that's the case?
Speaker 3:because I thought, with trump being coming president, that all the social media platforms, including tiktok, were there for his inauguration and all that weren't, they, weren't they all together in a sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if anyone can tell, by my deep size, how I feel about the state of politics and the new president. It's not hard to figure out. But you're right, everyone's like kissing up right now. I just, I just can't see it lasting. Okay. Okay, you know what? Maybe I'm hoping it doesn't last, you know?
Speaker 3:Okay Well, all right, we'll have to just wait and see then for you if that's actually going to be the case. You're hoping that it's demise. I mean I hope it stays. I think it has been a good platform overall. It doesn't feel like all the social media platforms are based in one country either. I think that's another nice thing to think about, that it's not majority controlled. It is still is majority control, but there's a there's an opportunity for other people outside to to create yeah, yep, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I know we touched on the social media ban, the blanket social media ban that Australia put in place. Yeah, so it's been a few weeks now, or a few months, whatever. Yeah, nothing's changed. How's it going? Nothing's changed.
Speaker 3:Nothing's changed. But the whole point was that there's 12 months to implement. We're in that 12th period so realistically, we're not going to see something about what's happening here, where we're going with here. Nothing is going to be until this time next year. Realistically, 2020, start of 2026 is where we'll see. Maybe towards the later half of this year we might start seeing that progression change and people dropping off.
Speaker 2:But as of right now I'm curious how they're going to implement off, but as of right now, I'm curious how they're going to implement. I mean, I was working at a job when a law came out in california that required everyone that had information on their, on the people of the state, they could call and request everything you had. Yes, and there was a similar 12 month time frame implement and the company was with. It took nine to 12 months for us to figure out how to make this work and implement it, and I'm thinking all these companies are trying to do the same thing. How do we actually do age verification Right now? We say you must be 13 or whatever in the terms and agreements, but we don't enforce shit. So I'm curious, from a technical standpoint, how they're going to do it.
Speaker 3:I think it'd be similar to. My friend was telling me they're back into the dating game and all the dating apps and stuff and a part of the dating apps you can verify your face, which uses your phone camera, so you upload the photos of what you want, blah, blah, blah, and then it's using your phone's camera to verify that your face matches the face in the photos. I would say that's probably going to be something along the lines of using face identification where you're going to have to Every time you log in?
Speaker 3:I wouldn't say log in, I think setting up the account.
Speaker 2:That's BS. You know that that is bad. Bad. You get an older friend to do it and then they go away yeah, yeah, there's always going to be a workaround like that's.
Speaker 3:That's, that's the reality of it. There is a workaround, and when we talked about the social media ban in australia, I think I brought up that the the government was more so, saying there's lots of parents out there that have, and I think it is worldwide. It's not any. You know. Australia's not the only exception. There's a lot of the parents out there that feel like they have to allow their children to be on social media because other parents have said so. You know what I mean? It's that peer pressure as adults or as parents, to do something that you don't feel comfortable with, just to keep your child in the loop, or whatever way. The australia government was basically trying to say, hey, we'll be the bad guy and back up anyone here, so you can't feel bad as a parent, whether or it's now us be the one saying, yeah, exactly I.
Speaker 2:It's funny you mentioned the parental peer pressure. My wife and I don't ever fall into that trap like we'll hear things you know from my kids, like but you know someone's friend's mom and dad, let them do it, and I and I always say the same thing. I'm like well, I'm sorry that their parents don't love them enough, but you're not getting it yeah, I would probably say the opposite way.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, I don't love you enough to actually do that, because really, that's how your children are feeling at the time but it is, you're evil, you're the devil, all that stuff. But you know tiktok's banned or not. Who knows if it's gonna stick around. But it'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 3:It'll be interesting to see what happens yeah, I mean I will say I kind of hope it doesn't because, like, even though I haven't done any any, anything at any time, because you know quite some time, the appeal of especially like getting games because I still get games offered to me and I have accepted games that I haven't done anything with their appeal is actually my tiktok account. Now it's not my twitch anymore, where it was like can you stream games it's actually the appeal of can you make content with our games on tiktok?
Speaker 3:so I kind of, kind of don't want anything to go because I kind of I think I think in reality of 80 of my followers, the us. So, yeah, there is a yeah. That was always, always my biggest gripe when it came to streaming and tiktok, where my followers was oh, I had put my viewership in a total different time zone to me. That was hard for me to do live streaming with the numbers where most of my followers were either asleep or just getting up to go to work, when I would go live yeah, I remember when I was, you know, I had the mentor program going.
Speaker 2:I had a number of people who were not in the us base. They're all asking how do I get to be part of the us? You know demographics, how do I get my videos and whatever shown there? And now I guess you don't technically have to worry about it too much yeah, you've been listening to Dad Mode.
Speaker 1:Our passion is navigating this wild journey of parenthood and modern life, From balancing family time to managing your career and still squeezing in some gaming and content creation. And no matter what the women say, they will never be able to pry the controller out of our cold dead hands. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, find us on Twitter, TikTok and YouTube at DadModePodcast and we can be found on every podcast site at DadModePodcast Y'all be cool. See you next time.
