📢 As TikTok Ban Looms, We Bring You StickTock.com

January 17, 2025

Anyone with a web browser can now watch TikToks while protecting their privacy:

StickTock.com is 100% free and open source software (FOSS) developed by privacy advocates. StickTock.com allows users to view, share, and download TikTok videos without exposing themselves to invasive tracking. StickTock.com running in a desktop web browser

You can also turn TikTok.com video URLs into StickTock.com links just by replacing the word “tiktok” with “sticktock” so that:

https:// www. tiktok .com /@efforg/video/7241629982534126894

can be changed to:

https://www.sticktock.com/@efforg/video/7241629982534126894

…and shared across the web. When a user clicks on the new StickTock.com link, our web app will download and convert the video for you to watch outside of TikTok.

This web app was launched by our small team of developers at PrivacySafe, where we are building a suite of privacy-first solutions. StickTock.com servers are hosted in Iceland, a jurisdiction known for its strong commitment to Internet freedom and data privacy. To help circumvent censorship, we also host a Tor .onion hidden service that can be accessed via Tor Browser.

As our logo hints, StickTock.com is a “band aid” solution. We can’t promise it will persist long after the TikTok ban, but we made it easy to deploy by sysadmins and fork by developers. As the US population scrambles to find access to TikTok videos, we hope StickTock.com will call attention to the vital importance of free speech and digital independence.

🎙️ Information Wants To Be Free. We’re Helping It Flow Freely.

The US Supreme Court will uphold the ban on TikTok in the United States. That sets a dangerous precedent with far-reaching implications for free speech, privacy, and international relations. This ruling will pave the way for similar bans on other foreign-owned platforms, particularly those with connections to countries like China that are viewed as adversaries of the US government.

The maxim “information wants to be free” is not a relic of the 1980’s — it’s a rallying cry for 2025 as our Internet-connected societies face growing restrictions on information access. Across the globe, populations are subject to national bans on content, platforms, and apps. Now it seems the US population will be cut off from the billions around the world who use TikTok to communicate and publish.

The US is sending a worrisome message to the world by putting digital shackles on its population. TikTok is a medium for 170 million Americans to share ideas, art, news, and opinions. About half of the US adults on TikTok get their news there. And, because “information wants to be free,” many of those adults are not only resorting to frenzied downloads of TikTok before its removal from app stores — they’re flocking to other apps like RedNote that give them access to Chinese social spaces.

Downloads of RedNote are approaching 1 million, as TikTok users make their point clear. Even though the app could be blocked under the same statute that mandates a TikTok ban, and there are serious questions about RedNote’s privacy, a significant portion of the US population wants to use Chinese apps.

👁️‍🗨️ We Know TikTok Has Privacy Issues. That’s Why We Made StickTock.com

TikTok has been accurately criticized as a privacy problem, but the US government’s national security concerns remain vague and insufficiently documented to justify a ban. TikTok bakes adtech trackers into its apps that collect and monetize user data. That’s a problem that is very real and needs to be addressed, but it’s also an issue that is rampant across the smartphone app ecosystem.

Adtech spyware is central to the trillion-dollar fortunes of Big Tech companies like Meta, who own Facebook and Instagram. Google is notorious for inventing invasive methods of user tracking, Apple was recently caught red-handed eavesdropping on conversations, and Microsoft’s privacy transgressions could fill a warehouse.

It’s precisely because the PrivacySafe team knows apps like Facebook and TikTok don’t respect the privacy of users that we make tools like StickTock.com. The driving force behind this new app is Sean O’Brien, founder of Yale Privacy Lab and Research Fellow at Yale Law School. At the end of December, Sean joined 34 other academics in an amicus brief on the US Supreme Court case, which argues convincingly that the TikTok ban is “shocking” overreach and that “free speech consequences are thus serious and wide-ranging.”

Sean is a security researcher who is no stranger to the issues with app surveillance. He has spent much of the past decade exposing hidden trackers in smartphone apps and calling attention to information leaks.

💻 Open Source Is Vital for Privacy, Security, and Access to Information

Our team at PrivacySafe is building a suite of apps that are 100% free and open source software (FOSS). Such FOSS apps foster transparency by allowing anyone to inspect the code for vulnerabilities or backdoors, enhancing community-driven security audits. This transparency builds trust, encourages rapid bug fixes, and empowers users and developers to collaborate in strengthening defenses against cyber threats.

Releasing our code under a FOSS license is a good way to ensure that it persists far into the future. We want StickTock.com to be improved and built upon over time, and we encourage our repos to be branched and forked just as we remixed an earlier codebase. We want to thank developer MarsHeer for taking the initial steps that made StickTock.com possible and we have released our updated codebase under the GNU AGPLv3 to ensure it stays free.

Mikalai Birukou of 3NWeb and PrivacySafe has pulled all-nighters to improve the stability of our app and make it as portable as possible. The speed that allows us to ship StickTock.com so quickly is only possible because of the power of FOSS collaboration.

We should also mention ProxiTok, the once-popular FOSS frontend for TikTok. We hope StickTock.com might be useful to help iron out the issues ProxiTok has been facing with the fetching of TikTok videos.

The world of FOSS is really powerful, and our apps are just a small part of it. There is now an exciting FOSS project called Loops, a video platform with a TikTok-like interface that publishes to the “fediverse” — connecting it to communities like our own PrivacySafe Social.

PrivacySafe hosts a publicly-available StickTock API that is open for developers to plug their apps into it. That might also mean a bridge between TikTok and other platforms. It would be great to see TikTok videos shared freely across FOSS communities via open API standards. StickTock.com API

💪 The Bottom Line: There’s Strength In Numbers

At a time when Americans face the prospect of losing a platform they use daily for self-expression, StickTock.com demonstrates the power of open-source technology to preserve access to content while prioritizing privacy and security. When communities of speech and privacy advocates copy, remix, and share, they become much stronger than isolated individuals. If we want global conversations that embody the potential of the Internet to continue, we have to engineer around barriers and build new methods of protecting speech.

Information wants to be free, and StickTock.com is proof that privacy and access aren’t mutually exclusive.

🙏 Thank You For Reading!

Join PrivacySafe Social to keep up with our app releases. We’ve got more public apps fresh out of the oven and you’ll be the first folks who get a taste as we announce them.

🌍 Find Us Around the Web

We’re getting our message out on: 🌞 PrivacySafe Social: https://privacysafe.social/@bitsontape • Telegram: https://t.me/bitsontape • Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/privacysafe.social • Twitter X: https://twitter.com/GetPrivacySafe • LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/PrivacySafe-app

© Ivy Cyber Consulting LLC. This project is dedicated to ethical Free and Open Source Software and Open Source Hardware. Ivy Cyber™ and Bits On Tape™ are pending trademarks and PrivacySafe® is a registered trademark. All content, unless otherwise noted, is licensed Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 International. Header photo includes screenshots of TikTok videos shared by funny.rowena.

Bits On Tape™ is a twice-weekly replay of science & technology stories by cyber experts. These bits are put to screen by Sean O’Brien, leading voice behind privacy and cybersecurity at Yale Law School and founder of Yale Privacy Lab, and edited by Cherise Labonte, science researcher and licensed Registered Nurse.

© Ivy Cyber Consulting LLC. This project is dedicated to ethical Free and Open Source Software and Open Source Hardware. Ivy Cyber™ and Bits On Tape™ are pending trademarks and PrivacySafe® is a registered trademark. All content, unless otherwise noted, is licensed Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 International.

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