youhe US battle with TikTok over data privacy concerns and Chinese influence has been heating up for years, and recent moves have brought college campuses to the forefront, with several schools banning the app for complete in the wifi of the campus. Students have responded, of course, on TikTok. Taking advantage of viral sounds, have expressed their outrage for the blocking of his favorite app at universities like Auburn, Oklahoma and Texas A&M in recent months. “Don’t they realize that people in college are actually adults?” one user wrote. “We should make our own independent decision to use TikTok or not,” said another.
But how did we get here?
The actions come amid a cascade of TikTok bans by state and federal lawmakers in the US, who say the app’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, could collect sensitive data from users. users and censor content that goes against the demands of the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok first came under serious attack by the Trump administration in 2020, with a sweeping executive order barring American companies from doing business with ByteDance. That measure was later repealed by Joe Biden in June 2021, but the company’s woes were far from over. The current president stipulated that the committee on foreign investment in the US (CFIUS) conduct a security review of the platform and suggested a way forward to avoid a permanent ban. That review is ongoing, with no published timeline for a final decision.
Meanwhile, states have taken action of their own: Congress passed a ban on TikTok on all federal devices in December and 31 individual states have banned the app on government devices, most of which have been passed in the past two months. Most of the campus bans have taken place in states that have already passed their own anti-enforcement rules, but questions remain about the impact such measures will have.
How does TikTok ban work?
Schools often block or throttle traffic to certain websites on campus Wi-Fi networks, including harmful content and pornography, and such measures can extend to specific apps. Similar steps have been taken in the past, such as with the controversial anonymous social media platform Yik Yak.
But tech experts say these bans are fairly easy to circumvent since the app will only be banned on shared campus Wi-Fi and not on individual devices. To bypass the block, students can simply turn off Wi-Fi and use personal mobile data, as an expert told me in my story on the subject this week.
“This specific ban is likely to be hardly an inconvenience for students subject to it, and it would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, both technically and ethically, to force students to use TikTok on their own personal devices,” said Mike Parkin, senior technical engineer at cybersecurity firm Vulcan Cyber.
Increased numbers of students exclusively using data instead of Wi-Fi could cause additional problems, such as clogged data networks on campuses, causing student devices to run slower and more inefficiently.
“This is an extension of the clumsy and extreme state actions we have seen taken against TikTok at the state level,” said Angelo Carusone, president of nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters for America. “The ban will be ineffective and does nothing more than score political points and tax an already flimsy infrastructure.”
‘A red herring’?
Many internet freedom advocates have questioned the policies, saying they amount to censorship and are largely ploys for influence at a time when targeting Chinese technology is politically beneficial. Others say such actions will only increase in the coming months as election season approaches and politicians try to outdo each other with new measures.
“It’s fertile ground, but TikTok is a red herring because such security concerns exist on all platforms,” Carusone said. “It ends up being a hyperpolitical issue that doesn’t respond to real threats.”
Meanwhile, many who oppose such moves have called for a broader effort to address some of the issues raised by TikTok’s recent legal battles, including the need for a national data privacy law, mandating data transparency. and the encryption of messages on social platforms. “These issues exist in all social media apps, not just TikTok,” said Gillian Diebold of the Data Innovation Center.
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