brian firebaugh
Brian Firebaugh is the owner of 4F Ranch in Hubbard near Waco. He and his wife April have been running the ranch since 2015.
He is one of eight TikTok creators who are part of a federal lawsuit filed after President Joe Biden signed a law last month banning TikTok unless it is sold within a year. It is. According to the Texas Standard, most members of the Texas Legislature supported the new law.
Firebaugh, known as “Cattle Guy” on TikTok, said he struggled to get his business off the ground until he started posting videos on the popular social media app.
“We were really struggling with other social media platforms, and a friend suggested it to us. . . 'Facebook is dead, Instagram's heyday was five years ago. We need to move to TikTok.' “There is,” Firebaugh said. “And he suggested I just set a record.”
Currently, Firebaugh has approximately 500,000 followers. He said the increased viewership led to him being accepted by Netflix for his reality TV game show called “The Trust.”
For him, TikTok played a key role in his success. It's also a way to educate people about agriculture, he said.
“There are other people in this world who are actively talking about what’s next. [agriculture] In a negative way,” Firebaugh said. “And if we don't talk about the positive aspects of it in the moment, people are going to hear all the negative things. And it's going to die.”
According to the complaint, approximately 170 million Americans create, publish, view, interact with, and share videos on TikTok. Creators like Firebaugh are concerned about their First Amendment rights and how a potential ban would affect their business.
TikTok has a parent company, ByteDance, which is based in China. Lawmakers argue that the app poses a national security threat because of its ties to China.
“If this were a real concern about our data, we would need comprehensive legislation to protect our data across all social media platforms, rather than a strict ban on just one social media platform. It should be enacted,” Firebaugh said. “That seems doubtful to me.”
Legal experts have also suggested that banning TikTok without supporting evidence violates the First Amendment. Earlier this year, TikTok introduced Project Texas, a roughly $1.5 billion project to store U.S. data in Texas.
The case is being handled by Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, which focuses on media, entertainment and technology. The same company teamed up with NPR in 2022 to sue the FBI for documents related to the George Floyd protests.
As for privacy issues among other tech companies, Google reached a settlement in federal court earlier this year by deleting the browsing history of millions of people who used “Incognito” mode. And last year, European watchdogs fined Facebook's parent company Meta $1.3 billion over privacy concerns.
“I've never been involved in litigation before. I've never actively sued the federal government before,” Firebaugh said. “…I hope this wakes up some politicians.”
