Forbes’ ‘Top-Earning TikTok-ers 2022’ List Contains Zero Black Creators

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Despite being some of the most influential accounts on TikTok, there are no Black creators on Forbes’ “Top-Earning TikTok-ers 2022”.

The publication ranked some of the platform’s most notable creators that collectively hauled in $55.5 million last year, a 200 percent increase from 2020. Specifically, Senegalese-born TikToker Khaby Lame boasts nearly 127 million followers, which is just six million shy of white TikTok influencer Charli D’Amelio, who has 133 million followers on the app and was ranked #1 on the Forbes list. With their TikTok following, white influencers have been able to be a part of beauty campaigns, record deals and multi-firm deals.

 

“We look at the top-earning stars whose fame originated first on TikTok. This leaves out other celebrities active on the app, like Will Smith and Jason DeRulo,” Forbes stated about their ranking process. “From there, our numbers estimate what the TikTokers earned from January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2021. This is different from our debut list in 2020, which calculated earnings from July 2019 through July 2020. Another difference: That initial ranking was a snapshot of who we thought had earned a million dollars from TikTok during those 12 months. With sponsored content rates up, a million isn’t hard to do anymore, which is why this new Top 5 list requires a minimum of $4.75 million in earnings, a point several times greater than our original roll’s cutoff.”

 

The list comes as Black TikTok creators announced a strike last year as they cited the co-opting of trends that were appropriated by white creators without being credited. A number of Black creators protested their mismanagement of their content. “People still need to acknowledge Black creators and not ignore us in any community that we partake in,” said TikTok user Jazmine Moore, according to Okayplayer. “To not belittle us or demonize our content for their amusement. We have each other in the long run and will succeed collectively as a family.”

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