I’m in the US, so obviously the TikTok ban just went into effect here. I’ve made my peace with the ban, but I did expect that I’d be able to access TikTok through a VPN - I’m more just curious about the technical reasons this isn’t working.
What I’m doing: from the US, I’m using NordVPN to route through the Netherlands. When I go to an IP finder website, it locates me in the Netherlands, so that part is working. When I tried to open TikTok in a normal browser window it wasn’t working, but I assumed that it might be because it looked at my cookies and could tell that I was a US-based account, even if the request was coming from outside the US. So I tried again in an incognito browser window, but I got the same 403 error.
I’m surprised this is even possible. TikTok isn’t banned in the Netherlands, and I don’t know how TikTok could possibly tell the incognito request isn’t coming from the Netherlands. It’s not like I’ve authorized location permissions for it, so my IP should be the only information it has about my location, right?
I have had issues before where streaming content that was supposed to be available in the Netherlands wasn’t available for me using NordVPN. Is NordVPN just bad, and websites denylist its IP ranges, or what?
It’s only been ten minutes, but it feels like an eternity. I’ve already checked my phone three times, half-expecting Tik Tok to magically reappear, but it’s still gone. My thumb twitches, like it’s looking for something to scroll, but there’s nothing. My mind is racing, jumping from one thought to the next. “What if I miss something? What if there’s a viral video or a new trend I’m not seeing?” The silence feels deafening. I try scrolling through Instagram, then Twitter, but nothing sticks. It all feels…off. The humor, the posts— none of it hits the same way. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but it’s like there’s a hole where TikTok used to be, and nothing can fill it. I tap through a couple of random apps, but none of them have that same pull, that quick, constant hit of dopamine I’ve gotten so used to. It’s frustrating. I try to tell myself this is fine, that maybe a break will do me good, but the more time passes, the more anxious I get. Why can’t I just enjoy the quiet? Why do I feel like I’m missing out? Ten minutes without TikTok, and already I feel like I’m losing my mind. What did I even do before Tik Tok? How did I survive without endless scrolling and that weird sense of connection it gives me? It sounds stupid, but this is harder than I thought. It’s like part of me is still waiting for that app to magically pop back up, to fill that empty space. But it’s not coming. And I’m starting to wonder if I can actually handle the silence.
You couldn’t access Tiktok because a majority of major VPNs are flagged as VPNs by major companies. There are numerous companies out there with databases they sell to companies like Facebook and Tiktok, which list all of the IPs of every known VPN.
However, there’s another set of VPNs that you won’t get detected on. I was using it this morning before Tiktok unbanned itself from the U.S. But it requires OpenVPN, and you need a master list of the user hosted VPNs. Those aren’t detected. Websites will think you’re just a normal user using a home connection.