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.
Hey, remember when College and University were for adults? What’s next, permission slips for field trips? I’d feel so fucking insulted if the administration of the school I had gone to had decided they knew what was best for me to view online.
They’re not banning it from your devices, they’re just banning it from their managed networks, just like a lot block porn and other “undesirable” content
When i was in school in the 2000s file sharing basically crippled the campus network until it was banned. A few bad actors were hoarding all the bandwidth and storing copyright violation stuff on school servers.
Still, it’s unnecessary and controlling. Is there a context where the use of the network for undesirable, but not illegal, activity that wouldn’t get you into trouble anyways? Its really not the institutions business what people do in their dorms or on campus faculty housing that doesn’t impact other people or endanger the network/school.