TikTok’s uncertain future in the US has caused a surge in people putting the app on their phones through unofficial means, the BBC has been told. An executive order from President Donald Trump means the social media platform can be used in the US despite the Supreme Court upholding a law which will see it sold or banned. Even so, Apple and Google are preventing new downloads of the app, meaning people are increasingly turning to a technique called “sideloading” if they want to get it for the first time or reload it to a new device. It involves users turning to third-party sites, which are sometimes referred to as black markets, rather than official retailers to get hold of software. One such company, Signulous, says 120,000 people have used its services to get TikTok onto iPhones. Neil Pomperleau, from the firm, shared screenshots from his dashboard that showed more than 2,000 downloads per hour at times. One of the most popular apps in the world can only be sideloaded in the US so it’s been a good thing for us with record traffic to our site and a spike in customers, he told the BBC. People in the US are also turning to virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow users to pretend they are in a different country – so TikTok fans can make it appear they are in Canada, for example, where the ban does not apply. Search engine queries for “VPN” hit an all-time high last month, according to Google data. Dozens of YouTube guides about the method have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in the last three weeks. Experts say the trends show how difficult a ban would be to enforce, if one is introduced when a final decision on TikTok – due by April – is made.
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