TikTok is the only truly democratic social platform. A US ban would rob us all | Sophia Smith Galer

TikTok emerged in the late 2010s as the tool to save us from one of the great evils of social media: follower counts.

ByteDance saw all the Americans with 54 followers photographing their flat-lay brunches, their endless vlogs, and their irrepressible desire to tell the world who they were, what they were doing, and what they wanted to be.

TikTok has many flaws but few would dispute it has democratised the visual internet.

Sophia Smith Galer is a journalist, content creator and the author of Losing It.

She says she will lose an indispensable part of her journalistic toolkit and her ability to represent global audiences.

As a user one of the 23 million in the UK , and 150 million in Europe it is like someone is walking into my local library and stealing half of its books before I ever had a chance to read them.