[zeestephen]

Why does a huge enterprise like TikTok distribute its product by app instead of having its own website?

Advantages? Disadvantages?

I would be instantly suspicious about downloading ANYTHING from a social media company.

[Pollard]

Being in the app stores, it only takes a few clicks on a phone to install. If you were to download it from a website, you would have to do something called side load the app to install it. That requires installing a file manager, granting new permissions, placing the downloaded file in the right place and then installing which takes more permissions.

The app installers can automate a lot of things and handles those permissions because it knows it’s connecting to apple’s or google’s app repositories.

I’ve side loaded an app before but I tend to be on the techie side.

The real question is, will they auto-remove tiktok as well when they pull it from the app stores. If not, people will still have their current version and not be able to update it which will eventually lead to security issues.

No one’s going to use tiktok from a browser. One of the main features is being on a phone which is totally portable. Seems like there should already be an existing replacement if all it does is take videos and place them on a central site for people to browse, search, follow people via phone or computer.

[ConservativeMind]

Apps give you access to the program environment on the device, while websites only get access to the front end of your browser. The browser is still in control, unless there is an exploit for that browser that lets you bypass it, and then you are at the operating system level. The app is already running at that level, so any exploit of the OS could compromise nearly everything.

The other thing that the app environment allows is for each app to scan the other apps on the phone, request access to contacts and camera, files, etc., but looking at the other apps and identifying your phone is basic to any app, because it needs to check for conflicts or shareable opportunities and your memory constraints, phone processor, etc.