For about $1,000, you can leave the Apple Store with a brand new, hermetically sealed iPhone that's been personalized for you by a proven genius.
Or, for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, you can buy a used phone with a cracked screen and full of dirty speakers from someone online.
It all just depends on how much you love tiktokField
When the video-sharing app stopped working in the United States on Saturday night after Supreme Court Backed by legislation that effectively banned the app, some users deleted the app from their phones. The app started working again the next day when President Trump said he was planning executive order to suspend compliance with the law. But as of Thursday, Apple and Google, which have removed Tiktok from their app stores to comply with the law, have not made it available for download again.
The uncertainty over whether the app will return to the app stores has caused some people who never took down the app to view their phones like golden tickets wanting anyone who misses a bummer through TikTok's algorithm, or had followers they can't reach After that the application was deleted.
It was not immediately clear how many people had deleted Tiktok or whether it would return to app stores. But 37-year-old people like Peter Gustab of Queens see opportunity in uncertainty.
Information technology engineer, Mr. Gustab, listed his Pro iPhone 15 with Tiktok loaded on it for $3,000 on Facebook Marketplace. That's about three times the cost of the new iPhone 16 Pro. On Thursday night he had an offer for $1,200, still almost every new iPhone and almost double that renovated iPhone 15 Pro without Tiktok.
“It would be beneficial for me because I could get a couple hundred dollars for it,” Mr. Gustab said. He will lower his asking price to $2,000 if he doesn't get a better offer soon, he said.
“This Tiktok app is worth it, man,” said Izell Malloy, 20, a 20-year-old car driver and Twitch streamer from New London, Connecticut. He said he was offered $5,700 on the Facebook marketplace for his iPhone with Tiktok on it.
Possibly iPhone listings asking30,000 not realistic. (Trait'n Keniston, 20, of Newport News, Va., scammed his phone from Tiktok for that amount, but said he wasn't sure the offers he received were real.) Even users going through the harshest tiktok withdrawals It would be difficult to buy a used phone at a 2025 price Toyota PriusField
But if you're considering dropping even a few extra dollars on a Tiktok phone, Freddie Tran Nager, associate director of the digital social networking program at the University of Southern California, says it's a really bad idea.
“It's very risky behavior to buy a phone that hasn't been destroyed,” Mr. Nager said, referring to the standard reset process that a Tiktok phone won't go through. These phones, Mr. Nager warned, “may contain spyware and other viruses that can really compromise your privacy.”
There are safer options. Tiktok is still available in web browsers, and some users Reddit says they have found a workaround to download the app. Even on phones without viruses or malware, TikTok's uncertain future makes it difficult for Mr. Nager to find value in these phones. If Tiktok has a long-term future, it will be downloaded again, he thinks.
TikTok's absence from app stores may sound familiar. “The Western world is in chaos” New York Times Wrote in 2014 when Flappy Bird, an addictive game in which users guided a small number of birds through an obstacle course, was removed from app stores. Phones with the app downloaded were listed for astronomical prices.
Mr. Nager said Tiktok is different. Some applications, such as games, can work perfectly well regardless of company ownership issues.
“The Tiktok app is just a gateway to access a website or platform,” Mr. Nager said. If TikTok goes dark again, the app is “simply a work of art.”
But art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. To someone renegade And pop culture memes can cost several months of rent.
