I don’t mean to debate the wisdom of the US government banning TikTok or any other app. Nor am I debating the constitutionality of doing so.
All I am wondering is, how would it be done? Would my phone provider or manufacturer (AT&T and Apple, in my case) be able to reach into my phone and delete an app without my cooperation? Would AT&T and others block access to TikTok’s servers? What would compel them to do so, given that they are private entities? Couldn’t blocking be easily circumvented by using a VPN?
If not sold within a year, the law would make it illegal for web-hosting services to support TikTok, and it would force Google and Apple to remove TikTok from app stores — rendering the app unusable with time.
There will be plenty of ways to bypass it, but it will cause a significant drop in users.
I have a hazy memory that Apple do have a kill switch for apps. Intended for major issues like zero day exploits that compromise the phone so badly they must be killed. I very much doubt Apple would be pleased to use it for the US government’s bidding. However Apple have removed the WhatsApp and Threads apps from the Chinese App Store recently, at the PRC’s request, so one might imagine there is already some element of pre-emptive action already occurring. In making such a request of Apple the PRC are basically giving the USA permission to to the same.
To kill off TikTok in the USA it only needs to be made difficult enough to use and provided a sufficiently degraded experience that users get fed up with it. Its entire success depends upon its ubiquity. If half your friends stop being available, you will start looking for a replacement. And Google, Meta, X, et al, will all be clamouring to provide it.
On iOS, there’s the app store or nothing. Google allows side-loading, but most people aren’t technical enough to do that.
There’s the web of course, but that’s not an app.
It’s almost impossible to block TikTok completely, but as Francis_Vaughan said, that isn’t necessary. It just has to be an annoying enough experience. Almost no one is going to install a VPN service to access it.
The language suggests to me that they would be removed from all US-based app stores. Other sites may, to be safe, block access to the app for those in the US.
I would expect they would lose their domain registration, like other illegal sites do. Their address ends in .com, which means it’s registered in the US. US allies might also block reregistering with them.
I’m not sure if their specific IP address would be blocked. I know other illicit sites usually acquire another domain name from a different country, but I don’t know if they also change their IP address.
Current versions of the app likely use their current domain, which would make them not work. However, it would be possible for them to get ahead of this and push out an update that has a new name, or even just uses their IP (if it doesn’t get blocked).
Going beyond what they do to sites that infringe copyright would seem unnecessary. Especially since the goal is to get them to sell the site off, rather than actually stop it.
I’ve travelled around a few places in Mainland China, where a range of Western web services (e.g. Facebook, Google - but not LinkedIn) are banned. Of course the apps were not removed from my phone; they remained installed. But they wouldn’t get a connection to the server. The user experience was akin to a timeout in case you have a technical problem with a connection: Perennial attemps of my phone to load, eventually it would give up. This would apply to both the app and to attempts to acces the pages via the browser. So the ban must have been implemented at the ISP level, prohibiting them from establishing a connection between my phone and the server. From a purely technological point of view, this can be put in place very swiftly.
You can change your own network name or IP address, but not that of the server you’re trying to connect to. All it takes is a blacklist of servers that ISPs are not allowed to connect domestic users to.
This is building the Great Firewall of China in the US. Currently such a list could be passed around, but there is no central way to implement it.
By far the easiest way for Bytedance to avoid this law is to simply have people go to a website, such as (the existing, but possibly not owned by Bytedance) tiktok.cn, which would resolve to a variety of IP addresses or content delivery networks not in the US. There is very little that can be done in an app that can’t be done on a mobile website. Videos, comments, ads, swiping, all of that stuff can be done in ways that need no support from app stores.
You’d be saddened to know how many people think “go to a website” means “type tiktok into the Google search bar and click the first result.” They might even go to the Google homepage and then search for tiktok.cn. Web browsers nowadays default to only showing the domain name of the website you’re on and nothing after .com or .net or whatever, let alone https://. I bet the number of TikTok users who know you can access it via the website is a single-digit percentage, and the number who actually do it is an even smaller fraction thereof.
My understanding, from talking to various people: It’s TikTok’s algorithm. It has the most sophisticated recommendation engine in the world. Many people have been amazed at the way it suggests videos that are exactly what the viewer likes.
There wouldn’t have to be a central way to implement it. Set up a blacklist of prohibited servers, pass it around ISPs, threaten them with severe fines if they don’t comply, and let them do the rest. When an alternate server under a different IP address pops up to circumvent the ban, add it to the blacklist - remember that to be useful, word of the existence of the server would have to spread around users, and then whatever agency would be in charge of maintaining the blacklist would also hear about it and could add it to the list. The only way that I can see to circumvent it would be a VPN.
You will need a law of some sort to do this, and, if I understand it correctly, the one passed does not. It bans the apps, not access to a server. That law (who you’re allowed to talk to), will then have to clear constitutional hurdles (to keep too much politics out of FQ, let’s just say that I don’t trust the courts to block something that to me seems like clearly a 1st amendment violation).
This already happens to some extent with the command and control servers for malware. Sometimes ISPs will ban connections to the servers, but it is very haphazard. Some ISPs will ban, and some won’t. If banning Tik Tok’s servers is voluntary, then it can be a distinguishing feature. “Buy your phone service from us, and watch all the Tik Tok you want!”
VPN ads are pervasive on YouTube and other sites. They are not some kind of dark magic IT. Most anyone who works from home is familiar with them, but also anyone who wants to watch shows from Canadian Netflix is familiar with them. Banning Tik Tok servers could be a large windfall for foreign VPN companies.
After India banned Tik Tok, the main consequence was YouTube shorts and Instagram Reels becoming much more popular.
Sure, but that’s not the point. The point is that it is certainly not beyond the technological capabilities of the US to implement a comprehensive ban on Tik Tok very swiftly once the decision is made to do so. Of course it will take more legislation than has been passed so far to do so, but legislation can be put in place very quickly too if the political will is there.
As for VPNs: Again, it’s illustrative to look at China. VPN providers without Chinese authorisation are technically illegal there, and their use is also illegal. Of course they are widely used to circumvent the Great Firewall, and Chinese authorities know that. To a limited extent they tolerate their use, especially by foreigners. But only to a limited extent; every now and then someone gets prosecuted. I wouldn’t rule out that if non-American VPN providers such as Nord are, on a large scale, used to circumvent a Tik Tok ban, a debate will start whether Nord should be threatened with severe fines in the US to refuse connections to blacklisted Tik Tok servers.
