TikTok is being banned by 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 Inspired by executive orders from a variety of state governors, the app was created. Alabama, Arkansas and Florida, Georgia, Idaho and Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas are among the states that have implemented measures to block access to the app from their campus wi-fi networks.

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 app, which consistently tops U.S. charts is under intense scrutiny at both the federal and local levels.

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.”

It has been long suspected that the U.S. government is also involved in terrorism. 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 greater access to legal recourse and transparency regarding these relationships.

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 is certainly not forthright. 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 monitored journalists’ IP addresses to determine which employees were sharing unauthorized data.

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.