Did you guys just get the email sent from UF? Why’d they ban using TikTok on school wifi?
My old guess was that it had something to do with export controls, but it seems like the Florida legislature was responsible for the final decision instead. Regardless of their preceding stance, UF didn’t really have a say in the matter unless they were willing to be noncompliant.
What’s worse is they even banned WeChat. A great portion of international students, particularly Chinese students, use WeChat. That’s how people communicate with family, send/receieve funds. Let’s see how that all plays out.
the government would rather we all stick to American social media platforms (that also weaponize our data) because they play nice with FBI and Washington and are useful in controlling a narrative.
Ben Sasse owes favors for being handed a job he in no way was qualified for.
The average policy maker over 50 has no idea what tiktok even is beyond a bb gun we all might shoot our eyes out with if we don’t have responsible supervision.
Does anyone else have a phone that Eduroam never works with or is that just me? I honestly am on on cellular anyways and don’t use the UF wifi network on the device that would have TikTok.
A lot of ulterior motives from people higher up than UF and just overall racism
I mean, there are reasons in the email, right? Do those not satisfy?
tl;dr: PRC is an enemy of the US, so we don’t want them having access, via ‘private companies’ (edit: to) our stuff.
They constantly already try to hack us, including universities (see COVID etc etc), and I’m sure we’re always trying to hack them. We want eachother’s data. We spy on eachother. We will be on opposite sides of the next big war, and everyone high up in DOD thinks it’s coming. Letting them have any access to our resources is not good for us, so the government is taking action.
Yes, afaik one of those applications is used by international students (edit: for communicating with family), and I get that, but there are other options. PRC is an aggressor. See South China Sea just as one example. Yeah, it might suck for those students, but unfortunately their nation is not our friend, and there’s consequences to having enemies in this world, their form of communication is just caught in the 21st century crossfire.
Just learned that theoretically if u have tiktok on ur phone and ur phone is connected to a wifi network, tiktok can access other devices on the wifi network and see the files. Apparently there are firewalls and stuff but they can always be hacked. Thank u little bro for educating me
It’s because of all the underage girls dancing provocatively obviously
Watch the news. Or read it online. Happening all over the US. You can still go on tik tok just not on UF WiFi. So if you live on campus your roaming is going to go through the roof
The board of governors of florida public schools (other schools have to do the same). The reason for that is because one of the owners of TikTok is a chinese company.
The tik tok user agreement gives a lot of privileges to the developer. Florida is also a hub for intellectual property, which is a great target for foreign governments to go after
I don’t understand that first claim. Allowing TikTok doesn’t prevent the federal government from spying on American citizens. I would be happy having one vulnerability removed for our safety- people don’t realize the extent of the shadyness with tencent. It definitely makes sense for an American research university to block them from their internal networks.
I also really don’t know why you made a jab at Sasse at the end there. He didn’t have any say in this matter at all. It was from the Board of Governors, meaning all public universities are doing the same.
Hey! the US political lobbyists owned and funded by the American oligarchies pay good money for civilian social media data.
How else are they suppose to know how to gerrymander and what is the best fear inciting propaganda to use for each psychographic segmentation?
They have to ensure we vote for the politicians they’re endorsing of course!
TikTok is hampering their overall effectiveness, and that’s so unfair to them!
Good thing they can utilize their collection of politicians to introduce and push bills that will block these apps.
Because personally, if I’m not being force fed narratives & propaganda I wouldn’t know what to do with myself!
(*disclaimer - this comment is obviously facist satire)
Yeah, I’m just curious to learn more and am hoping someone will nerd out in the comments. I’m pretty technologically illiterate and was wondering if using tiktok on cellular instead of school wifi is safer for intellectual property. I was also wondering why they banned the anitvirus Kaspersky and WeChat as well.
I’m all for heavy regulation of TikTok on data collection, but signaling them out ignores the larger issue of American companies engaging in the same practice of selling data to belligerent nations. For example, Meta and their documented instances of selling user data to companies linked to the Kremlin and the CCP. Honestly, I wish Congress would go after Facebook and Instagram with the same fervor as they do TikTok.
Thank you for the response. The ban on UF devices makes sense to me, but I am wondering if it’s safer to use tiktok on cellular vs school wifi. I am super technologically illiterate, is there a way tiktok on someone’s phone on school wifi could somehow gain access to UF intellectual property?
The US is not always trying to hack China. I doubt the feds ever perform any cyber warfare on China at all. It is a normal relationship by now that we let much of the world peek into our private information but don’t do anything back. The US Federal government is much more likely to spy on its own citizens than those of other nations.
Theoretically if you have outlook (what UF uses for email) on your phone and your phone is connected to a wifi network, outlook can access other devices on the wifi network and see the files.
It’s not just tiktok, the government is using tiktok as a scapegoat in order to advance a front for gaining greater control over Americans and the information we are allowed to access.