TikTok could bypass US blockade by making a PWA

1 day ago (blog.lukaszolejnik.com)

I think what this misses is that TikTok will lose the ability to pay content creators. It may also cause legal repercussions for advertisers who want to spend on the platform.

From TikToks perspective, they may want the hard decouple so their users pressure their representatives. If they make a pwa or some other means to subvert the ban available it could undermine peoples desire to act.

Funny is that even with the executive order to not enforce the law for now, it puts Apple and Google in legal limbo if they don't remove the app. They are the ones that will have to pay huge fines, not TikTok.

  • The executive branch whose first and only job during times of peace is to enforce the laws is now expected to not enforce the law? This whole fiasco is dumb.

My experience with PWAs is… not great. What are the best and/or most popular PWAs?

They already have a mobile web interface, that anyone can crate a shortcut to. It'll work fine as-is, with or without a 'PWA' buzzword.

If a government really wanted to block internet access to a service provider, they'd block access to their servers, on all ports. The workaround would be a VPN, not a web interface.

The US has this strange banning-but-not-really, because really banning it would be prohibited by the constitution's first amendment.

  • How exactly would the do this block? At the ISP level? I don't _think_ the US Government has ever done that before, a block on that level would be pretty unprecedented and might be more then they are willing to do.

  • It desperately forwards you to the app store right now.

    • Given the choice, they'd much rather you use the version that has much better access to location data and notifications, but barring access to that, they'll likely turn off the nagging and let you use the web interface in peace.

I'm seeing many sites sending my behavior data to analytics.tiktok, will this be a part of the us blockade?

App stores being a useful tool of state control (vis a vis the open web) does make one wonder if it factors into the government pursuing them as an abuse of market competition.