A new hot item on eBay: phones with Tiktok installed

Cnn
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Without the way for users to download Tiktok, thousands of eBay sellers have listed phones with the app installed -hoping to take advantage of Tiktok’s disappearance from US app stores after a short ban.

Tiktok was pulled from the mobile app stores and got short dark Saturday, the evening before the deadline of a Federal Law Banning Tiktok in USA Unless it was sold to a company based in the US or one of its allies. The app was back for existing users approx. 12 hours later, after President Donald Trump said he would sign A executive order that delays the ban – but it’s still missing in app stores. So those who deleted or had never installed Tiktok still can’t download the app.

With the timeline of Tiktok’s App Store returns unclear, Some initiative people take advantage: Thousands of eBay lists have appeared advertising phones with Tiktok installed, as Wired First reported.

Many lists are in the interval of hundreds of thousands of dollars, although some optimistic sellers asking for a million or more. Some of these lists are marked sold, like this one one for $ 21,000 – But the phone is unlikely to be sold anywhere near this price, as salespeople can accept offers under the list.

From noon Thursday, searches for “Tiktok Phone” achieved more than 27,000 results on eBay.

Tiktok, eBay, Apple and Google did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Tikkok’s disappearance from app stores was not a shock as experts predicted this would happen as soon as the ban took place. But what happens then is unclear.

The law prohibiting Tiktok only requires its technology partners to no longer make the app available, charges up to $ 5,000 per year. Person who has access to the platform. This includes Oracle, which hosts Tiktok’s content in the US, and Apple and Google hosting the app at their app stores.

Meanwhile, Tiktok’s overall future in the United States is just as cloudy. The executive order signed on Monday night delays the enforcement of the Tiktok ban for 75 days, but it does not provide a permanent solution.

In order for Tiktok to continue to be available in the United States, bytance must either sell to an American-based buyer or the Trump administration must pass a new law to overthrow the previous one. The latter is an unlikely scenario in view of the broad Bipartisan support the current legislation received in Congress.

While bytance initially did not express any intention of selling Tiktok, it is now in active discussions about an agreement, a board member told Axios.