The uncertain future of Tiktok in the United States has caused an increase in people who put the application to their phones by unofficial means, the BBC said.
An executive decree of President Donald Trump means that the social media platform can be used in the United States despite the dissemination of the Supreme Court confirming a law that will see it sold or prohibited.
Despite this, Apple and Google prevent new downloads from the application, which means that people are turning more and more to a technique called “side flow” if they want to get it for the first time or recharge it to a new device.
This implies that users turn to third -party sites, which are sometimes called black markets, rather than official retailers to obtain software.
One of these companies, a sign -free, says that 120,000 people used its services to bring Tiktok to iphones.
Neil Pomperleau, of the company, shared screenshots of its dashboard which showed more than 2,000 downloads per hour.
“One of the most popular applications in the world can only be in the United States, so it was a good thing for us with record traffic to our site and a client peak,” he said at the BBC.
In the United States, people also turn to virtual private networks (VPN), which allow users to claim that they are in another country – so that Tiktok fans can reveal that they are in Canada, For example, where the prohibition does not apply.
The search engine requests for “VPN” reached a record level last month, according to Google Data.
Dozens of YouTube guides on the method have been seen hundreds of thousands of times in the past three weeks.
Experts say that trends show how difficult a ban would be respected, if you are introduced when a final decision on Tiktok – due before April – is taken.
Currently, it is not illegal to download Tiktok and although the American legislators have judged that the distribution of distributing it is against the law, President Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, said they would not apply it .
Unofficial application stores like Mr. Pumperleau operate in a legal gray area by enrolling customers to software developer accounts.
Companies often charge costs to take customers in the technical process of shared room – something that is accompanied by an increased risk of downloading defective or malicious software due to less resourced stores than official application stores.
Mr. Pomerleau – whose company invoices people annual costs of $ 20 – admits that it operates in risky territory.
“The Books Act is that Tiktok is not authorized to be distributed in the United States, but we are doing somehow on this rose swears with two different American presidents that they will not apply this law.”
“I imagine that Google and Apple are a little too predictable for their size and the whole situation is really unpredictable,” he says.
Tiktok himself also seems to trust the president’s promise.
On Monday, he published a download kit to facilitate Android users to put the application on the devices. The key outfit on Android phones is more common than iPhones.
Another iPhone download company called APPDB had nearly 95,000 Tiktok downloads and has seen its double membership since the prohibition according to screenshots shared with the BBC.
“People will always find a way to get what they want,” said Aleksei Borodin de l’APPDB.
An American user who downloaded Tiktok throughout the breeding process, Dewayne Puckett, said it was “an experience, but the application works as normal”.
Apple maintains that key download applications are a security risk and that applications have long insisted must be checked and verified via the official App Store.
The company invoices an average commission of 30% to applications using its store, which, according to consumer protection.
Although the costs are controversial, it is true that generally Apple succeeds in keeping malware away than other markets like Google’s Play Store.
Since March of last year, Apple has been forced to authorize the competition stores on the EU iPhone after new laws have been adopted to encourage more choices.
