Can TikTok be banned from US based Android devices?
raccoon.onyxbits.de
raccoon.onyxbits.de
Either way, the US could order ISPs to block TikTok servers, this would require a VPN and would kill TikTok for normies.
Do you think there is any legal mechanism by which they can actually order ISPs to block a server? While blocking financial transactions has plenty of precedent, I'm not sure there is any for straight up blocking communication which looks a lot more like free speech. Especially with no basis in evidence to support actual wrong-doing.
I think the magic happens when the issue is bipartisan, which is the case here as both parties are anti-China. When an issue is supported by both parties then it will pass 100% with no obstacles from the constitution or any laws.
Wouldn't work. US is 10% of user base but half of TikTok's revenue. The company is unprofitable so it needs all the revenue and revenue growth it can get.
>Not clear how that would affect TikTok sponsored influencers.
The vast majority of the top TikTok accounts, from Charli D'Amelio on down, are American. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-followed_TikTok_a...
Trump knows this, which is why ultimately ByteDance (and China) had no choice but to acquiesce in order to stay in the US.
I wonder how this would work ? Google can for sure remove an app from the play store and maybe even remove it from play services enabled phones.
If I am European and travel (in some hypothetic future where it is possible) to the USA, does tiktok get removed from my phone ?
Edit : I can open now. Some notes re : different apks for sideloading. I don't know if the author is being malicious here but they are inventing problems that don't exist. Yeah, there can be multiple apks for a given app (that's the main idea behind app bundles). However if you distribute your app yourself you either
- provide an universal apk that will install on all devices. It will be way larger since it needs to incorporate all the different possible configurations, but is trivial to make for a dev.
- detect the user device config and provide a download link tailored to that device. I guess tiktok is popular enough to go that route, but that's just a minor engineering point.
Also wow, very classy to insult people who use an app. Of course if you don't like a service people who do have to be dumb.
Today TT, tomorrow whatever the Party or our Dear Leader doesn't find complimentary?
I can't find an an article backing this up though.
I suppose Apple has this ability too. I've never really thought about it.
AFAIK this has only been used when they detected abuse from an app, not for because an app has been banned, but the capability is there
First - the article talks about the message delivery via push notification. The push notification is, essentially, a JSON object.
The relevant notification for push/delete would be something like:
notificationType: 2
docid {
backendDocId: "com.zhiliaoapp.musically"
}
pm uninstall -k --user 0 [package name]
Fourth - Kinda makes everything else a moot point, google play apps are served by google clouds (the author mentions this as well), so even if google couldn't remove the app from the phone, it could essentially cut the cords to the APIs and render the app useless. [2]
1 - https://jimcofer.com/2019/02/18/uninstalling-android-apps-vi...
2 - https://developer.android.com/guide/playcore/dynamic-deliver...
Final thoughts: The author touches on this, but I don't think anyone really knows the answer. Google can remove TikTok, but will they (they haven't yet, right? lol)?
EDIT: formatting and final thought
It’s a proto message, to be more precise.
Will the Courts, and especially the Supreme Court, agree?
My personal bet is that the Supreme Court will not agree with the ACLU on this. (Especially if Trump succeeds in appointing a conservative to replace Ruth Bader-Ginsburg.)
Trump has already been dealt a multitude of losses by “his” Supreme Court. Including a 7-2 ruling that he must disclose his personal tax records to prosecutors.
Access to Play Store apps can be restricted to certain countries. Such apps do not appear in search results. So it's possible for Tik Tok to disappear for anyone looking to install it in the US, or with a US-based Google account.
However, as long as a device allows sideloading (installing apps from other, "unknown" sources), and most of them do, it's debatable whether it could be banned from people's devices.
Google has some mechanisms to counter malware (Play Protect) but these are supposed to be used against "harmful" apps. It's debatable whether they would want to be involved in enforcing these restrictions this way.
It might be difficult for most users to follow the instructions to sideload an app, however there was the precedent with Fortnite, where users were asked to download it directly from fortnite.com/android (or use a QR code), and it seems to have worked. As far as I recall the Fortnite app was also preloaded on some phones.
The real difficulty for ByteDance might be something else altogether: namely, if the US prohibits doing business with the company, and the US users could no longer be monetized. Such a restriction would be very difficult to work around.
TikTok could serve those requests from China but serving video from China would make the app unusable.
I realize this isn’t the main point of the post but I’m very surprised this is pretty much an accepted thing now. I would have thought the Trump administration or the media would weaponize the potential exploitation of children and turn a complex geopolitical struggle into a moral panic for the public to more easily understand.
(this is a joke, but seriously I see quite a lot of them are just reposts; I believe the tiktok video editor is still best in class, although I've never tried it)