On a technical level, how is TikTok being blocked/banned in the US?

Can I still sideload the app to my phone? Is it only being banned from the two big app stores? Is there a penalty for being found in possession of the software on US soil?

  • SteveEnglish
    141·
    15 hours ago

    I believe Google and Apple are to be fined if they don’t remove the app from their stores.

    We don’t have the ability to nationally block the domains and IPs, so current users will still be able to access it. So you shouldn’t need a VPN.

    Android users could side load the app if they want.

      • SteveEnglish
        8·
        6 hours ago

        On Android you can download apps (.APK files) from the web, and install them without any app store.

        • SteveEnglish
          2·
          3 hours ago

          Not quite. You don’t need any app store at all.
          You literally download an APK file from a website or anywhere, then install it directly. Could even be a friend with a thumb drive. Doesn’t matter how you get it, it’s just a file.

          • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
            1·
            3 hours ago

            Yeah. Dont do that. Its how you install viruses.

            Install through another app store like fdroid. Its the secure way to get APKs

            • SteveEnglish
              31·
              2 hours ago

              That’s got nothing to do with what sideloading means.

              And the risks are very overblown.
              While it’s possible, it’s extremely rare.

              Mostly because the potent target pool is so small. Bigger potentials for bad guys if they trick app stores into approving trojan horse apps, because everyone think app stores are safer.

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      6 hours ago

      We don’t have the ability to nationally block the domains and IPs

      I disagree. It may be able to circumvent it, but US ISPs could configure their DNS servers to not resolve the domains and their routers to drop packages from and to these IPs. It will affect everyone who uses their ISPs default config for DNS and not uses VPN/Tor, which is a lot of people.

      The question is: Is there a legal procedure to do that? For malware they are sometimes doing things like that (seizing botnet control domains etc), but tiktok isn’t officially malware, AFAIK.

      • SteveEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        This isn’t North Korea.
        Even China and Russia can’t fully block things.
        Our networks aren’t nearly as controlled as theirs.

    • Nougat@fedia.io
      107·
      15 hours ago

      Public DNS servers hosted in the US will get notified to delist the domain or direct it to an alternate IP. ISPs will get notified to route IP traffic elsewhere.

          • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            12·
            14 hours ago

            Yeah, I do to. We’re not talking about theoretically blocking access to a site nation wide. We’re talking about the TikTok ban, which doesn’t stipulate any sort of network blocking, it’s just a delisting from the app stores.

            The government has never required dns providers to remove records for a domain, or required ISPs to null route traffic to IPs. That’s almost certainly a First Amendment issue, and I can only imagine that such an order would be immediately challenged in court.

            • Nougat@fedia.io
              11·
              14 hours ago

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_States

              Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA)

              In March 2008, the New York Times reported that a blocklist published by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), an agency established under the Trading with the Enemy Act 1917 and other federal legislation, included websites, so that US companies are prohibited from doing business with those websites and must freeze their assets. The blocklist had the effect that US-based domain name registrars must block those websites. According to the article, eNom, a private domain name registrar and Web hosting company operating in the US, disables domain names that appear on the blocklist.[38] It described eNom’s disabling of a European travel agent’s web sites advertising travel to Cuba, which appeared on the list.[39] According to the report, the US government claimed that eNom was “legally required” to block the websites under US law, even though the websites were not hosted in the US, were not targeted at US persons, and were legal under foreign law.

              As far as null routing IPs, we’ll see.

              • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                6·
                14 hours ago

                We won’t see, it’s never happened and isn’t a requirement in the ban bill.

                Read the cited article in Wikipedia. https://web.archive.org/web/20170407043030/https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/us/04bar.html eNom didn’t block DNS users from resolving the domains, they were the registrar for the domains. The domain owners were paying eNom to list their records. As soon as the domain owners moved to a different DNS provider, anyone in the US would be able to access the sites again, even users using eNom public dns servers (if they exist idk).

                You didn’t cite a case of the US blocking DNS providers from resolving a domain, you cited a case of the US blocking a registrar from doing business with an entity on a blocklist published by OFAC.

        • Nougat@fedia.io
          13·
          14 hours ago

          To be fair, it wouldn’t be every ISP that would reroute, just backbone ones. Their routing tables would filter down to regional and last mile networks.