About availability of TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps in the United States
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TikTok goes dark in the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396 - Jan 2025 (312 comments)
The same guy who pushed for a ban massively last year, is going to save the app despite the security concerns he and most of our government said they had. If only we knew what happened in that classified briefing that made them vote together across party lines.
[1] https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxbusiness.com/foxbusiness.c...
I don't know about any classified briefing, but TikTok publicly shot itself in the foot badly during the vote, though a hamfisted attempt to influence it. I think that was enough in itself to bring about bipartisan unity.
I started to think the world was going to end but its ticking along in the same manner which has now coloured my views.
Especially since a lot of young voters / voters in general don’t see much of the impact of the president.
Him doing something popular that the average person can see seems like a huge win.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/17/americans-banning-tik...
Rasmussen consistently gets ranked as one of the least reliable major pollsters, and has a heavy conservative bias. I would take that with a whole salt crystal.
People who loose stuff will feel much much strongly that those who on political or intellectual level support the ban. The later will move on, the former will remember.
iykyk. Also this article from two days ago is hilarious, "congressional leaders who championed the law are now shying away from calling for the ban to begin Sunday" with Schumer, Jeffries and the White House all trying to pass the buck to someone else and try to avoid a ban:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/us-leaders-lawmake...
Reality is this was a game of chicken. American leaders wanted to force a sale not be left standing like a trophy hunter next to the corpse of one of the most beloved apps. Now the elephant is dead and there's no hunters to be found! We'll see what happens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_...
could you explain this in more detail? really curious about it.
Do you understand that the President doesn't pass laws, Congress does?
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/lawmaker...
But I will say, partly emboldened by Massie's admissions, the absolute control Israel has over the US government is concerning.
It's completely possible, perhaps even likely, that Israel is justified in the conflict, but doesn't change my feelings that they have too much control of our own government, mostly via AIPAC.
Upon launching the game on iOS, the following message appears:
> Unfortunately, MARVEL SNAP is temporarily unavailable on US stores and is unavailable to play in the US.
> This outage is a surprise to us and wasn't planned.
> MARVEL SNAP isn't going anywhere. We're actively working on getting the game up as soon as possible and will update you once we have more to share.
I guess we'll see how temporary it is.
Presumably they are switching to a new publisher and will be back soon.
Oracle shut TikTok's servers down, because they didn't want to risk being fined a trillion dollars.
Apple and Google are at the whim of Congress here
I just think that governments shouldn't be able to easily take down internet services like this. If it was just a normal web service with reasonably competent userbase, it could continue operating a hidden service over tor or some other mixnet. Instead, the government can effectively shut down the service by sending takedown orders to app stores and ISPs, which are naturally monopolistic and have little reason to stand up to regulators and act on behalf of their user's interests.
People have locked themselves into walled gardens and this is the end product. The town square has been privatized and controlled. Own your computers, people! Or someone else will.
I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I hate hypocrisy (which this is) and rarely hesitate to call it out. On the other hand I believe "corporate personhood" is absolute bollocks. I resolve this in my own mind by saying that the ban on bills of attainder can be extended to corporations and other entities without declaring them persons. Laws should be statements of principle, timeless and equally applicable to all, not one-off actions targeted toward specific entities.
The power of digital dictatorship, USA government can kill a company, the entire ecosystem, all of the companies, users, entities relying on the digital application and service with stroke of pen. Every country and person on the planet should have vested interest to reduce choke points that can be exploited by USA government. So USA government shenanigans can't just ruin the invention you created, your jobs, your peaceful Sunday.
Every company is subject to the laws of every country where it operates. I don't know why you're singling the US out.
Ultimatley Bytedance is responsible for their own behavior and the consequences.
This creates a vacuum of time that Americans now can use on other tech apps. American leisure hours is a finite resource, in a way TikTok competes with Netflix, Meta, and even sports.
That’s revenue in other areas.
Amazing news! It's a plot to stop people buying new phones, hence saving the planet a little bit...
Twitter was fun for the few hours when it got hacked and they shutdown all of the "verified" accounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Twitter_account_hijacking
Wonder how Meta's stock will do on Monday
My guess is the price won't budge on Monday.
It is permanently region banned in China and India, and has been for years.
That’s all the law was asking for.
ByteDance chose not to, and now everybody thinks the U.S. is banning apps “just because”.
Where is the “all ByteDance had to do was sell, and we’d still have our TikTokShops” outrage, which is where any outrage should be focused.
Though I when last changed countries I did find that I lost some purchases. I would guess it can happen when an item is not available in the new country.
There’s a rate limit on how often you change countries and you’ll need a payment method from the country you want to change to (e.g. a credit card issued in that country, the address on the card doesn’t matter).
You’ll also need to cancel e.g. your Apple TV+ subscription before you can switch.
Maybe someone who's done it more recently can comment?
It would be brutal if what you say is true. Simply moving is not something a user would expect to reset their whole account.
And if purchases were lost I would think it would be pretty strong grounds to bring a lawsuit against the company (especially if the apps were bought prior to any attempts by Apple to write in clauses permitting what'd amount to theft).
I understand not being able to redownload the app, but you can't restore the app if you move to a new device? I had no clue Apple checked which apps you were restoring. On Android you could get the apk and reinstall just fine without Google stopping you.
> Sorry, TikTok isn't available right now
> A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now.
> We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!
I understand several reasons they might be making that business decision, including supportability reasons. I also get why they might be choosing to explain the situation dishonestly. But understanding their potential motivations doesn’t make a dishonest explanation any less dishonest.
I assume douyin is available in China?
Is the web capable of all native app functions yet? What’s missing?
China doesn't allow open social media for its citizens for the sole reason that it's bad for the stability of the CCP's dictatorship regime, not because it's bad for the people or the country.
I view it as the CCP stating American media cannot be trusted. In that case, why should the US trust Chinese media?
Artificially suppressing competition is the most anti-capitalist and anti-American thing I've ever seen, no matter how shitty this particular app may be.
don't like seeing apps delivered exclusively via stores that can implement these daft bans, ecosystem taxes etc.
also ignore people yapping about China being such a huge adversary when the 2 countries do close to a trillion USD yearly in trade, it's all lip service to get their competition killed unfairly so they don't have to innovate or an attempt to scare the govt/some LPs into funding their most often useless faux-nationalist bullshit without oversight.
> it's all lip service to get their competition killed unfairly
I think that you'd have a point here if we were talking about a country that allowed their citizens unfettered access American social media apps but China does not do that.
If seems foolish to play by a set of rules that the other side does not. This isn't competition in a normal sense.
All ByteDance has to do is sell for a generous valuation
> If you already have these apps installed on your device, they will remain on your device. But they can’t be redownloaded if deleted or restored if you move to a new device. In-app purchases and new subscriptions are no longer possible.
But regardless, good riddance.