On January 19th, marketers and social media managers across the U.S. woke up to the surprise news that CapCut, the go-to video editing app for so many of us, had been banned as a part of the Bytedance debacle. While TikTok came back online for existing users, CapCut (also owned by Bytedance) is still offline, and now we’re all left scrambling for alternatives. As a regular user of CapCut Pro, I’m already foreseeing the impact—some client videos are probably going to be a little less polished and missing features I used to rely on.
It certainly caught my team and I off guard—we didn’t expect CapCut to be caught in the crossfire. To be fair, we also did not know that CapCut was a Bytedance software (somehow). CapCut’s user-friendly features made it a key part of our workflow, allowing for fast, high-quality edits. Losing it feels like losing a key team member, and I know I’m not the only one feeling this.
A few years ago, it was generative AI that took the creative world by surprise—sparking debates about copyright, creativity, and whether automation was going to dampen our craft. It forced many of us to take a hard look at how rising tech will shape our future, both as creators and as professionals. Now, here we are again, facing another curveball in our industry. With the CapCut ban, we’re reminded how dependent we’ve become on these platforms, and how quickly things can change. It’s a bit unnerving, but also, this is just the next hurdle.
That said, I’ve noticed American creative tools just aren’t keeping up. Adobe, for example, has tried to catch up with the speed and efficiency of foreign competitor's tools, but Adobe Express still falls short. Its auto-captioning feature, while available, is clunky and requires an entirely separate process from the rest of the editing workflow. Social media has demanded fast, edited content for nearly a decade now—so why is it that American apps still lag behind?
Even Meta, with all its resources, is only now exporting its Reels editing software and developing their upcoming “Edits†app, and yet it still won't be available as desktop software. Seems strange, especially considering how reliant we are on social media for business and communication.
This situation raises a lot of questions for me—and I’m sure others feel the same: What does this mean for us as marketers? Are more tools we depend on going to face similar restrictions? And, with all the tech options out there, what’s really worth investing in now?
I’d love to hear what other marketers and social media pros are doing to navigate this. Are you finding new apps or adjusting your workflow? What’s working (or not working) for you and your team? Let’s figure this out together.
#socialmedia #capcut #bytedance #marketing #oped #graphicdesign
