TikTok ban unleashes new threats
This has been a long and noisy day. Countless articles picked up on TikTok’s self-selection to “go dark” late Saturday night before being restored midday Sunday afternoon. Between times, we confirmed that VPNs could not defeat the ban and that US accounts could not be accessed from anywhere. TikTok is still not clear – this is a firefight to enable the platform to find an acceptable American suitor or partner, not an apology. And in the midst of this tumultuous day, some alarming data has been thrown into the mix, suggesting that the threat to iPhone and Android users is much worse than most users realize.
The data comes courtesy of Cloudflare, whose technologies support enough Internet security services to measure trends and changes at scale. In the wake of TikTok’s US platform going offline, Cloudflare says “our data showed a clear impact starting after 03:30 UTC (10:30 PM ET on January 18, 2025),” when TikTok was darkened.
Since then, Cloudflare says, there has been a huge spike in DNS traffic to TikTok-related domains. “This includes DNS traffic not only for TikTok, but also for other platforms owned by ByteDance, such as the video editor CapCut. Traffic dropped by 85% compared to last week and showed signs of further decline in the following hours.” The data also showed that “traffic from TikTok’s proprietary network ByteDance (AS396986) in the US to Cloudflare suffered a sharp decline, dropping by 95% after 03:30 UTC (22:30 ET).
No surprises there, we expected as much, considering TikTok’s 170 million US users were suddenly released. What’s more surprising is that “DNS traffic for TikTok alternatives, driven by RedNote, has increased in recent days, and not just in the US” This is the network effect: when US users are forced to switch, they create a global trend.
Increased traffic to TikTok alternatives – including Chinese apps
When this trend goes viral, it becomes hard to stop. “Daily US DNS traffic for TikTok alternatives has increased since January 13th, reaching up to 116% growth on January 15th [and] January 19 is on track to surpass that growth,” Cloudflare confirms. But the company also says that “other countries where we saw a clear increase in daily DNS traffic to TikTok alternatives were Mexico (a 500% increase on January 18), Canada (68% on January 18), the UK (53% in January). 18), Germany (110% on January 18) and France (75% on January 18).
Cloudflare says “these trends are consistent with apps like RedNote rising to the top of the Android and iOS App Store.” This followed another trend making headlines as the TikTok ban became more real, with “TikTok refugees” flocking to other Chinese apps. There have been some interesting social experiments — American and Chinese users chatting, for example, or posts suggesting users test what kind of Chinese political content might trigger a ban from other platforms. But the bigger story is the pan-on-the-fire aspect of all of this – security and privacy.
TikTok is a security and privacy risk, as are all social media platforms. And user data supposedly going to China — as it’s making news in Europe again this week, despite TikTok’s denials — adds some spice. But the Chinese platforms that haven’t been completely wiped out represent a much bigger threat to all those iPhone and Android users getting in.
“I am concerned that Americans are flocking to a number of adversary-owned social media platforms,” US Senator Mark Warner tweeted to Bluesky. “We still need a comprehensive, risk-based approach to assessing and mitigating the risks of foreign-owned applications.” And whatever the reality, the lack of transparency and scrutiny is undeniably true.
Was this accelerated viral migration part of the thinking behind the brevity in shutting down TikTok, despite the fact that the platform didn’t need to go dark and could simply wait for the change in administration? We don’t know.
What we do know is that you shouldn’t install and use Chinese social media apps thinking they are the obvious replacement for TikTok. They are not. These Chinese-based apps don’t have the protections that even TikTok has added to its platform, and there’s none of the oversight — again, real or redundant — that TikTok has been forced to put in place. You should be very careful before you allow apps on your phone and with the permissions you give them.
My expectation is that the TikTok shutdown will not happen again, all the ingredients are now in place for a clean fudge. But whatever happens, remember that privacy and security threats are very real on your phone — regardless of its flavor. And don’t take any of these convenient risks simply because hordes of others are doing the same.
