Why VPN does not get around US TikTok ban
Despondent American TikTokers searching high and low for a fix after the beloved social app went dark are having a tough time getting around the ban.
Users on Sunday were just beginning to realize that the Chinese-owned app remains dark even when using a VPN.
Virtual private networks can trick websites and apps into thinking a user is in a different country. VPN software is commonly used in countries where an oppressive government restricts access to social media — like Iran, China or Russia.
But TikTok ensured its shutdown could not be so easily evaded.
“Whoever said a vpn would work after the tiktok ban, you’re goin straight to hell,” one frustrated user wrote.
Another added: “went through the process of setting up a vpn to access tiktok and it still don’t work.”
TikTok chose to shut down at midnight Sunday, rather than sell its US business and comply with the mandate of a law passed by Congress in April.
Anyone trying to access the app is not confronted with a message saying it’s working with President-elect Trump to find a solution.
Trump, who takes office Monday, floated a pause in the ban until he could negotiate a 50% US takeover of ownership of the app.
Members of Congress who backed the ban said TikTok can’t return to the US until it’s no longer in Chinese hands.
TikTok’s US shutdown seemingly prohibits any accounts created in the United States, even if users turn on a VPN.
The Post also confirmed that trying to access the site with a VPN from inside the US doesn’t work — even without an account.
After the app went dark early Saturday for 170 million Americans, agitated app users vented their frustrations on X and Instagram — with many searching for quick fixes or hacks to bypass the federal law that banned the app after it failed to find a new owner that isn’t Chinese.
“PSA: VPNs don’t work if your TikTok account was created in the USA. You have to make a whole new account “in” another country,” one person wrote on X.
“Just put on a VPN for Canada and TikTok still didn’t work,” another crushed TikTok user wrote on X.
There appears to be some workarounds. Some users claimed that using a VPN on a computer allowed access to the app — but only if the account was created outside the US.
TikTok’s total shutdown is similar to its tactic in the Chinese enclave of Hong Kong. It announced it was pulling out in the wake of draconian national security laws there — in an attempt to assuage concerns about Chinese government control.
TikTok was already banned in mainland China — Chinese citizens instead use Douyin, a TikTok app with Chinese characteristics.
Simple VPNs also cannot penetrate the app’s ban there.
Both apps are owned by Beijing-based ByteDance.
The app’s shutdown was widely anticipated after the Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld Congress’s law that required the platform’s Chinese-owned parent company to divest its stake in the company by Jan. 19 or face a national ban.
