TikTok is banned from more universities
Public universities across a widening swath of U.S. states have banned TikTok in recent months, and two of the country’s largest colleges just followed suit.
The University of Texas and Texas A&M University are two of the latest colleges to take action against the social app, which is owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance.
The flurry of recent campus TikTok bans A number of state governors issued executive orders that prompted the development. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Georgia have taken steps to limit access to the app by blocking it from school wi-fi networks as well as devices owned by schools.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered Texas state agencies to ban the app from government devices in early December, citing privacy and security concerns stemming from TikTok’s Chinese ownership. Abbott characterized the concerns as “growing threats” and gave agencies until mid-February to plan around the changes.
“The university is taking these important steps to eliminate risks to information contained in the university’s network and to our critical infrastructure,” University of Texas Advisor to the President for Technology Strategy Jeff Neyland wrote this week.
“As outlined in the governor’s directive, TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices — including when, where and how they conduct internet activity — and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government.”
A Texas A&M spokesperson confirmed to the Texas Tribune that “… Students, faculty, staff and visitors will not be able to use the app when connected to an A&M network.”
TikTok is still in a confusing and contradictory state in the United States at the beginning of 2023. The federal and state governments are also closely monitoring the app, which is regularly at the top of U.S. charts.
The Biden administration banned TikTok from government devices In a bill signed at December’s end. Christopher Wray, FBI Director raised red flags over TikTok’s ability to collect data on its users and its potential to spread Chinese state influence operations around the same time.
“All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn’t share our values and that has a mission that’s very much at odds with what’s in the best interests of the United States,” Wray said. “That should concern us.”
Long-standing suspicions of the U.S. government have been expressed as well. running its own covert influence operations Although there has been no evidence suggesting that U.S. tech firms encouraged this behavior, it is consistent with platform policies.
Although ByteDance’s accusation of ByteDance is ironic, it is worth noting that apps based in the U.S. have more options for fighting back against government requests as well as more channels for transparency.
The Biden administration’s concerns about TikTok’s Chinese ownership are themselves an extension of worries that took root in the U.S. government During the Trump era. The Trump administration attempted to force ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. business to a new owner, though those unprecedented efforts fell apart over time.
ByteDance was certainly not open about its shortcomings. how data flows between its U.S. and China operationsThis raised eyebrows about the other secrets that the company may be hiding. Last month Forbes reported TikTok’s parent company logged journalists’ IP addresses in an attempt to find employees who were sharing unauthorized information.
The bans by universities are unlikely to have an impact on TikTok’s popularity in the United States, regardless of whether there are any ongoing concerns about TikTok’s use. Students can easily switch to their own mobile data plans to get around network-level bans on campus, though many school employees will soon have a firewall between the app and their university accounts — and potentially one less social channel to monitor.