For about $ 1,000 you can leave an Apple Store with a brand new, hermetically sealed iPhone that is personalized for you by a verified genius.
Or you can buy a used phone with a cracked screen and with dirt -filled speakers for hundreds or even thousands of dollars more on the internet.
It all depends on how much you love Tiktok.
When the app for sharing videos stopped working in the United States on Saturday evening after the Supreme Court had supported a law that effectively banned the app, some users removed the app from their phones. The next day the app started working again when President Trump said he intended to issue an executive order to interrupt the enforcement of the law. But from Thursday, Apple and Google, who had removed Tiktok from their app stores to comply with the law, no longer made it available to download.
The uncertainty about whether the app will return to the Appstores has led to some people who have never removed the app, see their phone as golden cards, coveted by anyone missing the Tiktok algorithm or misses or misses or Followers who could not reach them after they have gone hastily removed the app.
It was not immediately clear how many people Tiktok removed and whether it comes back to the app stores. But people like Piotr Gustab, 37, Van Queens, see opportunities in uncertainty.
Mr Gustab, an information technology engineer, placed his iPhone 15 Pro with Tiktok downloaded for $ 3,000 on Facebook Marketplace. That is about three times the price of a brand new iPhone 16 Pro. On Thursday evening he had a bid of 1,200 dollars, still more than almost every brand new iPhone and almost twice as much as a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro without Tiktok.
“It would be a good deal for me, because I could get a few hundred dollars for it,” said Mr. Gustab. He will lower his asking price to $ 2,000 if he doesn't get a better offer, he said.
“Unlocked with tap and capcut” is an advertisement on Poshmark ($ 3,500). “Iphone 14 pro unlocked! W/ Tiktok ”, calls a mention on eBay ($ 3,000). On Facebook Marketplace, sellers include screen recordings in their entries to verify that Tiktok is installed on the phone.
“This tap app is worth a lot, man,” says Izell Malloy, 20, a car salesman and Twitch-Streamer from New London, Con. He said he was offered via Facebook Marketplace $ 5,700 for his iPhone with Tiktok on it.
Perhaps iPhone listings that ask for $ 30,000 are not realistic. (Trait'n Keniston, 20, from Newport News, Virginia, placed his phone on Tiktok for this amount, but said he was not sure that the five-digit bids he received were really.) Even users who have the toughest tick Going through recordings It would be difficult to buy a used phone for the price of a Toyota Prius from 2025.
But if you are considering to spend even a few extra dollars for a Tiktok telephone, says Freddy Tran Nager, deputy director of the Digital Social Media program at the University of Southern California, that a very bad idea.
“It is very risky behavior to buy a telephone that has not been erased,” said Mr. Nager, referring to a standard reset process that would not take place on a Tiktok telephone. These phones warned Mr. Nager, “may contain spyware and other viruses that can really endanger your privacy.”
There are safer options. Tiktok is still accessible via web browsers and some users on Reddit say that they have found a solution to download the app. Even on phones without viruses or malware, the uncertain future of Tiktok makes it difficult for Mr. Nager to see the value of these phones. If Tiktok has a long -term future, it will be downloadable again, he thinks.
The absence of Tiktok in the Appstores may sound known. “The Western world got into chaos,” wrote The New York Times in 2014, when Flappy Bird, an addictive game in which users lead a small poultry through an obstacle lane, was removed from the app stores. Phones on which the app was downloaded were offered for astronomical prices.
Mr. Nager said Tiktok is different. Some applications, such as games, can work well, regardless of the company's ownership problems.
“The Tiktok app is just a gateway to a website or a platform,” said Mr. Nager. When Tiktok goes out again, the app is 'just a work of art'.
But art is, just like beauty, in the eye of the viewer. For someone, the apostate and pop culture memes may be worth renting for a few months.
