TikTok Ban—When Is Your iPhone, Android App Coming Back?

It’s the question now being asked by 170 million American users who have been left “dark” as TikTok shutters its U.S. operations for the time being at least. When will the app be back? And the nightmare scenario has come true. This isn’t just an App Store issue, this is a platform issue. TikTok has pushed its adherence to the ban to the fullest extent.

Many users who read the news commentary in the lead up to Sunday expected a VPN might help circumvent the ban. Not so. ”Unfortunately, VPNs aren’t currently working to bypass the ban,” Top10VPN’s Simon Migliano told me. “Bytedance seems to be completely committed to preventing even a single U.S. user from accessing their TikTok account.”

ForbesTikTok Ban—This Is Your Only WorkaroundBy Zak Duffman

As I reported early this morning, just after the ban came into effect, the only workaround seems to be using a VPN “to create a new account from a non-U.S. IP and SIM,” Migliano confirmed. “But that’s as good as it gets at the moment —if your TikTok account was created in the U.S. or with an American SIM, then changing your IP address or spoofing your GPS data won’t unblock TikTok as you would normally expect.”

The overnight surge in VPN demand in the U.S. has been as high as 827%, “a really significant increase as VPNs are already very popular in the U.S., so it takes a lot to move the needle like this.” That just underlines the sudden impact TikTok’s shuttering its platform has had on the American public.

This was backed up by VPNMentor, which reported an even higher “surge in demand hitting its peak with a massive 1566% spike within minutes following the app’s shutdown in the country. However, this rapid escalation swiftly subsided as certain users discovered that utilizing a VPN proved futile due to the restriction blocking not only IP addresses but apparently all accounts originating from the USA. Despite that, our research team has been following this demand and can confirm that despite the trend’s oscillations, our last update was up 1400%.”

And that’s critical because it underlines the political angle here. TikTok’s decision to trigger the biggest impact it could, the fact that Biden has essentially deferred enforcement to the incoming Trump administration, the warm words from Donald Trump himself as to his plans to extend TikTok’s timeline as soon as tomorrow to see a deal done, and now some rumblings from Republican leaders that reversing TikTok’s shuttering might not be as easy as thought.

And then there’s the issue of the devil you know — the inference that while TikTok has its issues, we’re several years and a whole lot of scrutiny into a containing strategy. The raft of new Chinese apps surging on apps stores in the U.S., Rednote in particular, has security implications that no-one has yet really grappled with.

ForbesTikTok Ban Shuts Down App—Does A VPN Bring It Back?By Zak Duffman

All told, I expect your iPhone and Android apps will be restored in some way by the end of this week — it could be much sooner than that, maybe even by Tuesday if all goes smoothly. But TikTok will need to change as a consequence of all this, and it needs ByteDance to compromise on a U.S. deal despite reluctance to do so in the past — or we will find ourselves back here more permanently. Right now it seems inconceivable that the huge public impact will be ignored.

As painful as it is, ByteDance has played a clever but risky hand. In going further than needed, it has made a stark point and forced the timing of what happens next. But the risk will be the unintended consequences of that decision. No-one can fully control what happens next, not ByteDance and not even Donal Trump — there are too many moving parts.