U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to participants at the White House Creator Economy Conference in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC on August 14, 2024.
Anna Moneymaker |
On Wednesday, 100 digital content creators and industry experts gathered at the White House to talk to world leaders about the creator economy, a sector that is booming because social media platforms are making it easier for users to monetize their content.
President Joe Biden attended the Creator Economy Conference, the first event ever hosted by the White House Office of Digital Strategy.
“They are the future,” Biden told opinion leaders in the White House Indian Treaty Room, speaking without a teleprompter. “They are the new possibilities. They are the breakthrough in the way we communicate.”
“That's why I invited you to the White House, because I'm looking for a job,” he joked.
Other senior officials also attending the conference include Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo and White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden.
They hear influencers’ concerns about the most pressing issues facing their industry. including AI technology, fair pay, data protection and the impact of social media on mental health.
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“These events ensure that creatives in Washington are given a voice that more traditional entertainment and media groups have had for decades,” Franklin Graves, a lawyer specializing in technology policy who attended the conference, told CNBC.
“The legal and policy issues faced by creators, brands and platforms in the creator economy are much more nuanced and are often not addressed by existing regulations or regulatory actions,” Graves said.
The content creation industry has seen an explosion in recent years due to the emergence of influencer marketing, e-commerce, and social media sites that allow creators to monetize their work on the platform.
Goldman Sachs estimated in 2023 that the creator economy offers a revenue potential of around $250 billion and that this will grow to around $480 billion by 2027.
Goldman estimates that about 50 million people work as content creators worldwide. The US Census Bureau does not consider social media a separate industry.
The growth of the content creation sector is posing challenges for lawmakers and White House officials when it comes to regulating Big Tech, social media and artificial intelligence.
At the centre of these controversies was TikTok, the Chinese video-sharing app and one of the fastest-growing social media platforms.
U.S. authorities are increasingly concerned that the Chinese government's business practices allow it to access data from TikTok, posing a threat to the privacy of American users.
In April, the president signed a law that would require TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the platform within the next year or face a nationwide ban in the United States.
Biden almost immediately faced backlash from TikTok and some of its creators who rely on the platform as a source of revenue.
In May, a group of TikTok creators sued the U.S. government to challenge the potential TikTok ban.
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