TikTok users are warning that any move by Australia to consider a US-style ban of the platform would destroy countless businesses and damage the economy.
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TikTok is already prohibited on Australian government devices but the company warned that extending that ban from public service use to general users would cost the economy more than a billion dollars.
Businesses are now mounting a strong defence of TikTok as an essential marketing tool.
"Canberra needs TikTok", according to Bri Williams who promotes the city to her 27,000 followers.
"That first TikTok when I first spoke about Canberra got 800,000 views," she said.
She uses the platform to counter a clichéd view of Canberra as a place of parliament and political types and little else.
"I started talking about things that people outside wouldn't consider doing in Canberra like lake walks or restaurants or going down Dairy Road.
"I do things which surprise people, where they say, 'Oh, Canberra's got that!'."
But Australian lawmakers are watching the situation in the United States where TikTok is threatened with a ban.
On Tuesday, the Senate in Washington passed a bill - which was then signed by President Joe Biden - to block TikTok if the Chinese parent company, ByteDance fails to sell it within a year.
The American worries are that ByteDance, based in Beijing, is so close to the Chinese Communist Party that the immense amount of information gathered on TikTok about its users could be used by China to influence politics in the United States and in Australia.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that his government had no plans to copy any move by US lawmakers.
But the tougher action in Washington may increase pressure on his government in Canberra.
And the opposition is ramping up the pressure after President Biden's approval of the new law.
"The Albanese government must do the same to make TikTok safer for Australians, or we risk being left behind," the opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said.
Beyond making "TikTok safer for Australians", Senator Paterson's spokesman told The Canberra Times that no detailed policy on how that might be done had been decided.
There is no doubt that many Australian businesses have benefited from TikTok.
Chefs and Dogs, for example, started in Canberra five years ago, and has built up a global business selling fresh food for dogs as well as products like birthday cakes for the animals.
The business now has 2.6 million TikTok followers. One of its founders, Daniel Tomas, said the platform had played "a crucial part in Chefs and Dogs achieving its goal".
TikTok is fighting back against the pressure to split from its Chinese parent company.
"TikTok is a platform that is loved by over 8.5 million Australians and 350,000 Australian businesses, with a recent independent study by Oxford Economics finding that we contribute $1.1b and 13,000 jobs to the Australian economy," the company's representative in Australia, Brett Armstrong, said.
"There is zero evidence suggesting that TikTok is in any way a national security risk, and we welcome the Prime Minister's recent comments that his Government has no plans to ban us."
TikTok has denied that it ever has or ever would share information with the Chinese Communist Party, though its critics say that under China's 2017 National Intelligence Law, it could be compelled to do so.
Australian influencer Bri Williams (though she doesn't like the term) thinks the government has got the balance right by banning public servants from using TikTok on government devices but allowing everyone to use it on their own devices.
For her, it widens discourse: "It can create movements. We saw it with Black Lives Matter and we see it with Palestine."
She also promotes her business: "There's a negative perception of real estate agents so it's about putting a human face to a real estate agent."
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But there was also a very dark side to all the social media companies, according to Belinda Barnet who lectures at the Swinburne University of Technology.
She said that companies like Facebook, X, Instagram and Snapchat were all in business to collect users' data, and that information was open to misuse. It wasn't just a problem with TikTok.
"They are also responsible for the negative social effects that arise from this business model, and we must hold them to account."
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
