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Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

> side-loading of apps on Android

90%+ users are never going to use apks. If this ban kills the network effect (the R0 of the viral infection), then the last 10% aren't going to last long either.

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There will be quite a stir in the school after TikTok disappears, and if a few kids still have access, they will get attention and other kids will want to know how. Perhaps a silver lining is that we're helping the upcoming generation understand the importance of controlling their own devices.

Imagine this boosts android marketshare in Montana as a side effect.

If it somehow happens I hope Apple follows with allowing side loading of (signed) apps as a competitive response. One can only dream..

i'd believe it's more likely they'll just switch to instagram. I get that insta may be worse in recommendation, but the extra hassle with apk may be enough to move users towards another app

Eh...given that Instagram Reels is virtually an identical product, I have a feeling kids will migrate over there. On a side note, Meta is probably signing praises for Montana now.

That's true, but TikTok's primary demographic (teenagers) contains a disproportionate part of the population willing to go to remarkable inconveniences to subvert authority. Alcohol and vapes take substantially more effort for your average high schooler to get their hands on than downloading an APK and pressing "install", yet there's no shortage of drinking and vaping happening.

As long as the overall platform is popular, it won't be surprising to see a lot of kids showing each other how to sideload.

We might get some cyberpunks against

the thing is, most us people are using iphone and it doesn't have sideloading(there are chances for sideload in eu but not in other places), so instant kill for that demographic(iphone is status symbol and most people have it so they'll not switch to android). For Android - your analogy is not quite good. A better analogy would be prohibiting a mark of alcohol (tiktok) when there is another legalized mark(instagram/shorts) but which tastes a bit worse-> people will continue to drink, but extra hassle will stimulate the switch to the legal type. Both factors will effectively kill the growth effect for tiktok so us userbase will switch (and since eu can have something similar, all western userbase will be cut)

> so instant kill for that demographic(iphone is status symbol and most people have it so they'll not switch to android)

I'd wager that if TikTok got banned in the US and Apple did not immediately follow with allowing sideloading, iPhone would quickly lose its status value in the teenage demographics. After all, status matters most when comparing equivalent goods - it's what justifies spending more for the same thing. In the scenario above, iPhone would immediately become painfully inferior to Android phones, along the dimension that matters a lot for the teenage cohort.

Or they'd move Youtube shorts.

Ir they'd move to Instagram Reels / YouTube Shorts, which are equal products except for the user base.

Bluesky is cool now because it's a gated community of privileged connected people, not because it's inherently better than Twitter.

Wait, wasn't Bluesky a Mastodon alternative, but without cancel crowd pathology? I need to get my Fediverse map straight.

The selling point of Bluesky is that it's invite only, so it's a bubble of people who only post things that confirm your priors.

No tweet networks are cool, the entire space is lame.

> Alcohol and vapes take substantially more effort for your average high schooler to get their hands on

You can order a nicotine vape online in most states and the only required ID is "confirming" that you are over 18. Doesn't detract from your main point.

This is only a single state ban, the majority of content creators are unaffected. There is zero chance of this ban having any impact on the network effect. If anything I predict the opposite, people will become frustrated with the walled-garden of iOS, I can see people choosing Android over it for the sake of being able to sideload TikTok. I remember when there was a sudden aftermarket of iOS and Android devices when flappy bird was delisted by the developer. TikTok is obscenely bigger.

This would be true if it was a country that banned TikTok. But the US is very interconnected, people in Montana have friends etc in other states who post regularly on TikTok, so they would be motivated to download APK's (or use a web version). They'll need a VPN too of course, but that's not particularly difficult. They've already heard NordVPN's ads on YouTube.

but of this keeps trending (more future bans) it will nudge more people to sideload to get around stupid middlemen who get in their way

countries who engage in these bans have conditioned many non-tech people to learn to use vpns and other tools

"sideloading" is the norm on desktop too, btw, and always has been

Doubt it... I seriously doubt even 1% of android users has even heard of FDroid or knows that Amazon has it's own android market you can load on your phone. That will really limit network effect overall.

If you download an apk off of a website you can install it just like that, no f-droid needed.

All it takes is one kid in class to sideload the app and show off to their friends that they have the app again, and others will follow.

Downloading from a website is simple enough. That’s what Windows users do for a long time. A mildly motivated teenager definitely can figure it out.

You may doubt it, but installing VPNs and getting software from alternate sources is a basic life skill in a country like Iran where the government tries hard to control what people see online. The old and young alike are doing this.

The article is about banning TikTok in USA.

So you think Americans are less capable of learning such things if given a motivation?

I don’t think tiktok is so valuable that Americans will start paying for a 3rd party service just to access it that requires additional setup, hassle, and technical savvy, no.

For an app that they already use daily, they will use APKs if that's what it takes to continue using it.

Fortnite was excised from the Play Store a while ago; how much did that affect their existing numbers?

I think the first thing that would happen is TikTok starting to develop a good PWA with native feeling which you can easily add to your Home Screen.

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