Was TikTok required to ban IPs from VPNs under the law and delete all US accounts, or did they just do this voluntarily to maximize the outrage at the ban? I know people from India who can access TikTok via VPNs, so I was wondering why I wasn't able to do the same here.
It had to do with where your profile was created. Also, to download the app, you need your Google or Apple account, and these were set up/registered to the US therefore your still blocked even with a VPN.
They banned accounts made or registered in the US so even if you got around the network and geolocation ban, you'd still have to create a new account. I'm not a creator but I've built my algorithm... yeah it would suck to lose that but making a new account wouldn't be the end of the world. For creators that would have lost their following and no longer have the option to make money from it, they'd probably just say screw it and go to another platform.
I don't know what happened but the browser on my PC was still logged in and was working. Probably 97% of the people I followed were in the US so I saw about 7 videos from Canadian creators and a bunch of other complete non-US random stuff. I felt like the cockroach that survived the apocalypse... as I scrolled, the feeling wore off fast and I realized it just wasn't the same.
They banned the accounts because they didn't want to chance getting fined if US users found a way to access.
if u used a browser with a vpn u could still access tiktok
It also asked me to "verify" with the app when I logged in to my Swiss account over a VPN so even without the account flag telling them I'm in the US they seemed to be using data leaks from an inherently insecure device to catch people.
The data for US accounts is in Texas. When TikTok shut down on Saturday night, they turned off the data centers run by Oracle in Texas. So it doesn’t matter if you’re using a VPN if the data centers are not operational.
Cause yer simcard, dummy!
It did work. You had to
