By: Jay Yi

The new short-form video platform Triller needed a way to surpass TikTok, so its team went to black creators, promising them as much as 4,000 dollars per month to post on their platform. Triller signed 300 creators, including David Warren, and offered contracts adding up to 14 million dollars.

Through the years, Triller has been talking to top TikTokers, promising up to 10,000 dollars per stream. They have also been spending tons of money, from giving TikTokers cars to hosting meetings in fancy restaurants to plan how they could take out TikTok.

However, many creators have not been paid. Some creators have only been paid for one month of work despite working for more than one month. The payment problem got so bad that some creators report they are “deep in debt, and are facing eviction and skipping meals to make ends meet.”

Even with these problems, Triller has become more known because of support from influencers such as Donald Trump. Triller was embarrassed again when in a report, they reported that the app had 13 million active viewers per month, but employees said they only had 2.5 million.

But after this had passed, the black creators started talking about how TikTok didn’t resolve problems with white creators taking trends created by the black creators, which led to the Black TikTok Strike. Triller decided to take advantage of the strike by promising all sorts of rewards to black creators. They even held an Assembly for Black Creators.

During the assembly, Triller took a big step: they promised 2,000 dollars to each creator, plus 2,000 more in stocks. The creators were thrilled, and Warren started thinking about how his life would change. Everything was going well, except there was a catch. Triller made each creator post a certain amount of promotions every month and blocked their access to TikTok.

Due to many creators not meeting these strict standards, many were kicked from the plan. One creator asked for an extension after one of their cousins had died, and Triller said no.

Eventually, word spread around creators that Triller was not keeping up with their payment schedule, and creators became skeptical. William Horne, 20, a content creator from Detroit, said, “They were super pushy about us and our deliverables, but when it came time for payment, they passed the deadline and breached their contract. The hypocrisy.”