this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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TikTok has hundreds of millions of users outside the US, they may just pull out [and then US users will VPN to use it like we're fucking Iran]
VPNs aren't that hard, but I feel like you overestimate the technical literacy of the general public in the US.
All the public will have to do is type "tiktok.com" in their browser and their computer will connect to directly to servers in China. For now, they don't even need a VPN.
Then our politicians will start discussing a national firewall. We'll show that we're better than China by doing the same things China would do (/s).
If you can use tik tok you can use a VPN. I click my VPN to start it and it auto connects. You think tapping 1 button on your phone is too hard for people who tap one button on their phone to open tik tok?
Doesn't the bill include fines for using tiktok with a vpn?
unless the bill has changed since the last time I read it, there were fines for hosting the service in US datacenters, and fines for companies allowing US data to exist in non-us datacenters. I don't think you could interpret the bill as imposing a civil penalty to a user using a vpn and accessing it.
Exactly. I read Division H of the bill (the more important to me), and civilians would only be impacted if they distribute a banned app or something. ISPs could potentially be culpable though, but I'm pretty sure that's related to hosting the infra for something like TikTok and not just allowing traffic to it.
So yeah, using a VPN with TikTok would totally work. Not sure if you could get updates to the app over VPN though, that depends on how the stores handle regions.
Specifically, app stores would be required not to host it, so you'd likely have to do updates through some sort of side-loading
I'm saying if you're reporting your location as the EU, could you get updates through the App Store? Or would it know you're a US customer and disallow it, even if you report that you're in the EU? Or does it use GPS location?
I would guess that it goes off of the lowest common denominator between IP address geo-location & billing address. If either of those say US, google/apple would probably be required not to distribute it.
Not that I saw.