The White House’s approach over the past month has been to keep everyone guessing through capricious feuds and ambiguous decrees, paralyzing them out of fear so that they edit themselves.
And so it was that two of the most powerful corporations on Earth, Apple and Google, kept TikTok off their app stores—the App Store and Google Play Store, respectively—for the four weeks after TikTok got a stay of execution from the government.
As of late last night, the app is back on both app stores. I doubt it’s the end of the weird saga, but it’s enough to present more of an illusion of normalcy around the app than we’ve seen at any point in the last month.
back from the dead. at least for now.
Even with the administration’s temporary reprieve after TikTok’s brief ban, neither company seemed to be all that sure whether that meant they could continue to offer the app on their app stores or not.
They chose caution and yanked it from their stores so as not to be caught in any legal crosshairs, since TikTok was in legal limbo as a company non grata. Apple had a webpage detailing its policy on TikTok, which has since been deleted. You can view an archived version on Wayback Machine, which was saved on February 9. It read:
“Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.”
After TikTok came back online on January 19, it was available for use by those who already had it downloaded on their devices, but you couldn’t download it to devices that didn’t already have it.
Earlier this week, ByteDance itself posted a workaround method for downloading TikTok to an Android device, but iPhone users were left out in the cold. The method of downloading an app from places other than an official app store, called sideloading, was safe when done through TikTok itself.
But it involved more tinkering than most people expect, since we’ve become accustomed to a mere click on the app stores. Who knows how long the TikTok saga will stretch on. Download it now, because as we’ve seen already, TikTok’s fate can turn on a dime at any moment.
The post TikTok Is Back on the iPhone and Android App Stores appeared first on VICE.
