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Comment by rsanek | Hacker News Reader

how would this actually work? iOS is so dominant among US teens it's crazy, and the ability to sideload on that platform is nonexistent even to very technically savvy users.

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If the holding power of TikTok is strong enough (which it just might be) then you might actually see teens start to switch to Android.

you won’t

I don't think it would be as unlikely as you'd think. It's not impossible for a significant amount of people to get a cheap Android for these apps, after all iPhones are a result of iMessage.

I think it's more likely that people would simply use the browser

“Large portions of US teens will get second phones for one specific social media app” is an absolutely wild thing to predict seriously

Most US teens probably already have a second smartphone-like device, and large portions of them have purchased them purely for one specific social media app.

I'm not saying it's more likely that not, but I am saying I wouldn't be surprised. If you replace "one specific social media app" with "iMessage", it has already happened.

Not only this - my observation is that having a secret backup phone is not an unusual practice for kids who might get their primary phone taken away at times by parents, school officials, etc. Or if their primary phone is subject to technical parental controls.

Yes, anecdotally many of my friends (and I) had a backup phone. Second hand Android phones are so cheap that why not? By the time the app has to be reinstalled it may make sense, if sideloading on Android takes off.

Many of your high school aged friends had a secondary backup phone with a separate cellphone plan they pay for? That’s wild!

I don’t think the average American high school student has two smart phones one of which is a secret from their major source of income (their parents).

No, why would they pay a cellphone plan for it? For most of them it was their or their siblings' previous phone, or their first phone they paid for themselves when they got a job, for others it's a cheap 60$ used phone they bought when their parents took theirs away at some point. That's like money for going out for lunch three times.

There's no use for a cellphone plan, we would just use wifi or hotspot from their main phone.

I wonder how many Android users would actually sideload it. Same happened with Fortnite for a few years, and idk how many people did that.

Fortnite never had even a hundredth of the smartphone screentime as Tiktok. I honestly think a lot (at least 5 million) Android users will sideload it once it comes to that.

Yeah but what % of them. Cause if it's only 1%, and 99% are going to some other app...

Or DJI. Side loading is so easy, we usually just call it "installing an app" there is no hacking or magic around that, works just like a .exe with some extra protections.

I got popcorn ready to see how the masses of iOS users will react to the TikTok ban

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