Summary
TikTok’s request to pause a pending ban and January 19th sale deadline was denied by a federal appeals court.
The court upheld the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, citing national security concerns.
TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has until January 19th to sell or face a ban.
Inability to reinstall when a phone is broken or replaced will send it on a slow death spiral if all they do is remove it from the stores. Or in Android’s case I guess this could drive users into adopting other app stores.
I think they will literally delete the app from our phones if they have that capability.
Arent they going to be blocked by ISPs?
My understanding from following the issue is they are just going to be removed from app stores. Desktop use isn’t much and an ISP block would be thwarted by a VPN which are cheap and ubiquitous.
That said, take my words with a grain of salt. I’m not a primary source.
Even if they get removed from app stores unless IOS is restricting installation or android is disabling APKs you can just install it from a third party.
You have to disable Play Protect it now blocks unknown apks on android 15 and higher most users will give up only tech inclined users will most likely pursue that cource.
What about developer mode? Sideload the apps?
Iirc you don’t even need developer options enabled to side load, just allow it under settings