TikTok's Traffic Bounces Back Despite Being Pulled Off App Stores (cnbc.com) 13
Despite being removed from app stores and facing a potential U.S. ban, TikTok has regained nearly 90% of its user traffic, according to Cloudflare Radar. "DNS traffic for TikTok-related domains has continued to recover since service restoration, and is currently about 10% lower than pre-shutdown level," said David Belson, head of data insight at Cloudflare. CNBC reports: The data from Cloudflare shows that, for the most part, TikTok has managed to maintain the bulk of its users and creators in the U.S. despite going offline for about 14 hours and remaining off of the Apple or Google app stores.
As for its alternatives, Cloudflare's data shows a spike in traffic the day of the temporary ban, with levels remaining steadily higher in the following week. Traffic for alternatives began to grow a week ahead of the expected shutdown, driven by the increased popularity of RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, Belson said.
But traffic to TikTok alternatives peaked on Jan. 19, the day TikTok returned online, he added. "DNS traffic fell rapidly once the shutdown ended, and has continued to slowly decline over the last week and a half," Belson said.
As for its alternatives, Cloudflare's data shows a spike in traffic the day of the temporary ban, with levels remaining steadily higher in the following week. Traffic for alternatives began to grow a week ahead of the expected shutdown, driven by the increased popularity of RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, Belson said.
But traffic to TikTok alternatives peaked on Jan. 19, the day TikTok returned online, he added. "DNS traffic fell rapidly once the shutdown ended, and has continued to slowly decline over the last week and a half," Belson said.
Unsurprising. (Score:2)
And the Chinese are laughing their asses off at all the useful idiots.
Re: Unsurprising. (Score:2)
Interesting results (Score:2)
The traffic did plummet when banned on a technical level and not just blocked from app stores. This should lead to two conclusions, one worrying:
a) The government can see an actual ban works (this is worrying).
b) The blocking of apps on app stores does fuck all.
Re: (Score:2)
a) The government can see an actual ban works (this is worrying).
Well yeah, levying fines against the companies hosting TikTok's US infrastructure always was the real teeth of the ban. The government would probably love to ban The Pirate Bay in the same manner, but it's a lot easier for a torrent indexer to remain accessible while hosted from overseas, versus a video sharing site used by 150 million Americans. You really do need the domestic hosting in order to meet the demands of such a large user base.
Technically, China could've said they DGAF and continued to host T
Re: (Score:2)
I think you've missed the point here. The Pirate Bay is a site that isn't tied to any one app or service, as such it can bounce around domains and countries at will. In the modern world of apps for everything you're often beholden to the maker of the app and reliant on them to not just move infrastructure but also push updates to reflect that moved infrastructure.
The only that that will work is if the app starts behaving like typical malware in contact with a command and control server, updating outside of
Re: Interesting results (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except how do you get creative? The primary problem here is that the internet resource that was blocked was tied to an app with restricted updates (pulled from stores).
Creativity is a problem in this space. You're stuck in situations then when you have an app that randomly updates itself by its own accord (not something typically done on a mobile device), and secondly you are reliant on TikTok to release the app. This is distinct from say TPB which simply spun up on another domain name, and since it was jus
Re: Interesting results (Score:2)
Workaround for IOS (Score:5, Informative)
I recently helped someone get TikTok back on their new iPhone and there's a somewhat convoluted process that does actually work. You need a few things:
iTunes 12.6.5.3 [apple.com]
Sideloadly [sideloadly.io]
A VPN. I used TunnelBear [tunnelbear.com] because it has a free trial and I wasn't about to spend any money on this.
Once you've got everything installed and the VPN activated (an exit point in Canada worked for me), the first step is to open iTunes and sign into the same account that you intend to use on the iPhone. This is important because the downloaded .ipa will then have a valid signature and can be sideloaded using what is considered to be a normal installation. You then go into account settings and change the country to any random address in Canada. It's worth mentioning that changing your country will cancel any app subscriptions you have through Apple and also erases all your saved payment methods, so you've been warned. After that is done, you should now be able to download TikTok's .ipa. On Windows, downloaded apps are saved in \Users\[USERNAME]\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications
Now, you can open Sideloadly, and click the IPA icon to select TikTok's .ipa file. Then click "Advanced Options", and under "Signing Mode" select "Normal Install". Finally, plug in your iPhone and when it shows up, press the "Start" button to install the app.
Optional step: Don't forget to set your Apple account back to the USA. Or don't, I'm not your father.
Powercntrl: 1
Overly draconian protectionism law: 0