• BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Either TikTok will win in court and overturn the law (possible), be sold (unlikely) or shut down (likely). I can’t see TikTok being sold being allowed by China, and even selling part of the business just creates a new global competitor to extend out of the US.

    Multiple competitors will appear in the meantime hoping to get the displaced activity. TikTok is hugely profitable and a dominant replacement in the US would make a lot of money. This will be seen as an opportunity to make a lot of money for the winner.

    I can see Meta trying to make a TikTok like clone, Google trying to leverage YouTube shorts, and Elon Musk trying to revive Vine at Twitter, plus lots of startups (mostly. American but possibly from other nations) vying to win the audience.

    Ironically the more interesting battle may be outside the US - TikTok versus whatever US app comes along.

    The deadline is after the US election - this could also all be political grandstanding and the politicians expectation might be that the law won’t stand up in court anyway.

    • Match!!@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      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]

        • Woozythebear@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          7 months ago

          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?

        • Dran@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          7 months ago

          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.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            7 months ago

            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.

            • Dran@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              7 months ago

              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

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                7 months ago

                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?

                • Dran@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  7 months ago

                  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.