We’ve noted a few times how the political push to ban TikTok is a dumb performance largely designed to distract people from our failure to pass even a basic internet privacy law or regulate data brokers. We’ve also noted how college bans of TikTok are a dumb extension of that dumb performance, and don’t accomplish anything of meaningful significance.
When the college bans first emerged we noted they’d be trivial to bypass, given the bans only apply to the actual college network. They obviously don’t apply to personal student use over cellular networks. And, not surprisingly, students are finding it extremely easy to bypass the bans, either by simply turning off Wi-Fi when they want to access the social network, or using a VPN:
“The student body, quietly, in unison, added Wi-Fi toggling to their daily routine. “Everyone was so nonchalant about it,” Pablo says. “They really just did not care.”
“There wasn’t a whole lot of pushback, aside from a lot of grumbling and groans,” says Ana Renfroe, a sophomore at Texas A&M. Some of her professors are still showing TikToks in class. They’ll just ask students to download the videos at home she explains, or will upload them to another platform like Instagram Reels.”
The folks who spent several years hyperventilating about how TikTok was some unique threat to the public (on an internet where countless international companies, ISPs, app makers, and data brokers over-collect and fail to secure consumer data) are, of course, nowhere to be found.
This doesn’t stop that at all. It just wouldn’t be able to send it to TikTok’s servers while connected to the network, but that doesn’t necessarily stop it from collecting shit.
Besides, if they wanted to ‘spy’ on universities, the ones that banned it almost certainly weren’t the targets, and there’s more effective ways to get important data like having stuff on people’s laptops.
It DOES stop that on a college network level. Maybe not per the individual… but that’s not the point anyway. The college/university doesn’t care that their students use the app. It cares that you are using it on their servers/devices because they view it as a vulnerability to their network.
They can literally just approach any US based social media and pay to access their data.
If there is a threat it is Tiktok dumbing down people who use it. The amount of misinformation is staggering not to mention getting it users addicted to quick meaningless videos.
I cringe everytime I see Tiktok or Youtube shorts. It is like they are designed for goldfish brains to watch with no long-term memory or critical thinking whatsoever.