On one hand: this seems 100% to go against the first amendment. If this were across the state, any device government, personal, or whatever, I don’t see how this ban can stand.
On the other hand: these are government devices. I know on the laptop my employer provides, I’m lucky to install half the things I need for work, let alone something like TikTok. There’s zero way that would fly.
I get that teachers want to use it per the article, but there are alternatives for that if their employer decides to not allow that avenue.
Also, the privacy angle really should have been the first attempt taken here. There’s definitely precedent for that approach in other states and the EU.
This isn’t a first amendment issue. No one is telling you not to install TikTok on your own phone. The devices in question are government owned and provided (it’s a work phone).
That ban also applied to public universities in Texas, which moved to block TikTok from campus Wi-Fi networks and school-owned devices. Texas A&M and the University of Texas were among the colleges that complied with the ban, limiting access to the hit social video app across their campuses.
They are literally barring its use through public university Wi-Fi. Not even needing to get into the hypocrisy of banning TikTok but not similar shit like Instagram, or the fact that both university students and professionals use TikTok both for social connections and for work, it is a clear curtailing of a form of communication over others through the government. Would banning lemmy.world from some public internet connections not be an infringement on the unalienable right to assemble and speech? RTFA.
This was my first thought when I read the article too. I only realized the past handful of years that a lot of people don’t really understand what the 1st Amendment protects.
Here’s the modern version of the First Ammendment: “Fuck China LOL”
