A few days ago I stood in the halls of Congress with 35 creators, researchers, labor advocates and industry leaders, and I kept thinking the same thing: How has the creator economy become this big, while creators are only now beginning to have a real voice in the policies shaping it?

That was Creator Advocacy Day, the first one we've organized through my non-profit Creators 4 Mental Health. The group represented a combined audience of more than 20 million followers and came from 11 states. We had four stops across Washington, D.C. Breakfast at the National Association of Broadcasters with Adobe, lunch at YouTube with their public policy team, an afternoon of meetings on Capitol Hill, and a happy hour with TikTok to close it out.

Lawmakers and staff from both parties met with us throughout the day, including Reps. Beth Van Duyne, Ro Khanna, Debbie Dingell, Hank Johnson and Lauren Underwood. In a political climate where agreement can feel impossible, that bipartisan engagement meant something.

Part of what made those meetings possible was the newly formed bipartisan Congressional Creator Caucus, co-chaired by Reps. Yvette Clarke and Beth Van Duyne along with support from the DPCC (Democratic Policy and Communications Committee). The caucus gives lawmakers a dedicated place to learn about the creator economy, hear directly from creators and work across party lines on the policies affecting our businesses and livelihoods.

That matters because creators have often been discussed in Washington without having a clear, organized way to participate. The caucus can help create an ongoing channel between creators and Congress, so this work doesn’t begin and end with one day on Capitol Hill.

Decisions about our industry are being made in rooms most creators have never entered. So I want to break down some of the actual laws and proposals shaping our work right now. Whether you were with us in Washington or have never thought about policy before, if you earn money online, this is part of your business now.

Start with the law you're already living under

The FTC Endorsement Guides aren't new and they aren't a bill currently moving through Congress. They explain how existing federal truth-in-advertising law applies to endorsements, including the requirement to clearly disclose a “material connection” to a brand.

That can include payment, free products, affiliate commissions, discounted services or a comped hotel stay. And the disclosure needs to be clear enough that people actually understand the relationship. Burying it beneath a long caption or assuming a platform’s partnership tool is sufficient may not be enough.

I’m leading with this because before we ask Washington for new protections, we should understand the responsibilities creators already have. Disclosure is the baseline. Now here’s where the larger policy conversation is going.

The AI likeness fight is the furthest along

The NO FAKES Act is the one to watch. It creates a federal right over your voice and your visual likeness, and it lets you sue over unauthorized AI-generated digital replicas of you. If you’ve ever worried about being voice-cloned, deepfaked or placed into content you never agreed to make, this is the bill designed to address that.

And it's moving. In June it advanced unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is rare. It's backed by a coalition you almost never see agree on anything, from SAG-AFTRA and the RIAA to YouTube, TikTok and OpenAI. It's led by Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Chris Coons, with a House companion from Reps. María Elvira Salazar and Madeleine Dean. It will now head to the Senate for consideration. There are real First Amendment questions being raised about protecting satire and parody, and those are worth taking seriously, not dismissing.

The one that covers artists specifically

NO FAKES protects your voice and your face. It does not protect your style. That gap is what the CREATOR Act is trying to fill.

Introduced in June by Reps. Beth Van Duyne, Yvette Clarke, Burgess Owens and Valerie Foushee, it would give visual artists a federal right to sue over AI that intentionally imitates their distinctive style for commercial gain. This is the bill artist Fabiola Lara and Adobe briefed us on over breakfast, and Adobe is the lead corporate champion. It's early. The ask right now is cosponsors and committee attention, which means creator voices actually matter here. If you’ve watched an AI system generate commercial work that appears designed to mimic your recognizable style, you already understand the concern behind this bill.

One thing worth clearing up, because the names are confusing. Van Duyne's CREATOR Act is not the same as Rep. Maxwell Frost's CREATE Art Act, which funds emerging artists' income and touring costs. Two different bills, similar names.

The bigger vision for creator labor

The Creator Bill of Rights is a resolution from Rep. Ro Khanna that I helped develop with fellow creator Lisandra Vasquez. It's non-binding, which means it doesn't create enforceable rights on its own. But it's the clearest statement yet of where Congress is heading on creator labor. Algorithmic transparency. Portable benefits that follow you across platforms instead of being tied to one employer. Recognition of creators as the small businesses we are.

I've worked on this one directly, and it comes straight out of the research we did at Creators 4 Mental Health. Financial instability, algorithm changes, unpredictable income and a lack of basic support don’t stay neatly contained within someone’s business. They affect people’s mental health, relationships and ability to build sustainable careers.

This isn’t only about the creators whose names everyone knows. It’s about the creator middle class: the people earning a living through their work but still worrying about healthcare, taxes, benefits, late payments and whether a platform change could erase their income overnight.

The immediate ask is additional congressional support. The longer-term goal is to turn these principles into enforceable protections while building an international coalition that can share research, policy ideas and best practices.

The one that's genuinely contested

Section 230 is the 1996 law that generally protects online services from being treated as the publisher of content posted by their users. It has helped shape everything from major social platforms to independent forums, newsletters with comment sections and smaller online communities.

Journalists including Taylor Lorenz and digital-rights organizations such as Fight for the Future have argued that repealing or broadly weakening Section 230 could backfire, causing platforms to remove more lawful content, require more identity verification and further entrench the biggest technology companies. Their argument is that the companies best able to absorb new liability and compliance costs are the giants reformers are supposedly trying to rein in. 

Others argue that the current law gives platforms too much immunity and too little accountability. This is one of the most genuinely contested areas of internet policy, including within both political parties, and it deserves more than a simple “for” or “against.”

The one that's already law

The TAKE IT DOWN Act was signed in May 2025. It makes it a federal crime to knowingly publish non-consensual intimate images, including AI "digital forgeries" of real people, and it requires platforms to remove reported images within 48 hours of a valid notice.

Paris Hilton, a survivor of image-based abuse herself, publicly backed it. Platforms were required to have the notice-and-removal process in place by May 2026, so the question now is whether those systems are accessible, responsive and effective for the people who need them.

This conversation is global.

Andreas Sandre, who participated in Creator Advocacy Day, published his own recap and expanded the discussion to the European Union and United Kingdom, where creators are already navigating rules covering commercial disclosures, platform accountability, copyright and AI transparency. His breakdown is a useful reminder that creators can be affected by a country’s laws even when they don’t live there, especially when their content or business reaches audiences across borders. 

So what’s next?

For years, creators were looked at as TikTok dancers or funny videos of animals online. That's how I put it in a CNN interview after the day wrapped. But this is a legitimate industry, and creators are already small-business owners.

The whole goal of the day wasn't to push one bill. It was to be heard, share our lived experiences, build a bridge and literally have a seat at the table. Broadcasters, platforms, software companies, lawmakers and independent creators have always come to Washington separately. This time we showed up together.

The longer-term vision is to build a Creator Advocacy Group led by creators and positioned in the middle of the ecosystem: part educational resource, part advocacy network and part support system.

We want creators to have a place to understand legislation without needing to become policy experts, stay informed about the issues affecting their businesses and be connected to the right organization when they need help. As the group grows, we can also mobilize around specific policies where collective creator voices could make a real difference.

One of those issues is how the government classifies our industry in the first place.

The North American Industry Classification System, known as NAICS, is how federal agencies categorize and measure businesses across the U.S. economy. The system is updated every five years, and the current revision process is an opportunity to advocate for creators to be recognized more clearly as their own industry.

That recognition may sound technical, but it matters. Better classification could help the government accurately track the creator economy’s size and growth, produce better data and ensure creators are properly considered in small-business programs, federal contracting opportunities and future economic policy.

Creator Advocacy Day was not the finish line. It was proof that when creators understand what is at stake and show up together, we can help shape what comes next.

The creator economy has spent years proving that it is real. Now it’s time to make sure our laws and institutions recognize it too.

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