UT-Austin blocks access to TikTok on campus Wi-Fi networks
texastribune.org
texastribune.org
> "We're disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies that will do nothing to advance cybersecurity in their states and are based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok," spokesperson Jamal Brown wrote.
Regardless of you stance on Texas and Texans and politics, the above is a pretty funny statement to make. We have to protect the integrity of short video apps that are built for advertisers to push products and services through ads and influencers.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/texas-bans-onlin...
That's already a thing... https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-recommendations-far-righ...
This is one of TikTok's greatest strengths as an entertainment platform (compare to Youtube or whatever). People never see shit they'd be Outraged(TM) at keeping their user experience generally positive, or if not generally positive at least basically never negative.
^ “advertiser supported”.
For the sake of argument, imagine if advertiser supported content was in fact banned in certain places. Don’t you think that non-advertiser supported models would quickly fill the gap?
Why does it have to be nationalist censorship?
The concerns with TikTok are always around data collection and propaganda, not it pwning other stuff on the same network with malicious network traffic?
I suppose they're just going along with their new law in a way that buys some political points.
Personally, I'd love it if we banned the damn thing everywhere, but only because I hate the mindless content :)
Your fridge was maybe made there too, are you scared a secret radio chip could activate to render your food communist ?
Whether it's a positive influence on _anything_ is questionable.
But it's not something happening outside politics
If you believe you're doing the right thing in some cases - you don't give up because you can't do the right thing in all cases.
UT Austin can be in the wrong. I'm just saying - simply because UT Austin banned TikTok doesn't mean they're doing it for censorship reasons. There could be other reasons...
The site filed a lawsuit against the block saying they couldn’t block the site entirely since it complied with CAN SPAM.
A slashdotter compared the argument to “I have a driver’s license and car insurance, therefore I have the right to park on your lawn”.
So, you're in favor of banning YouTube and most forms of television?
That's a strawman argument, they didn't say any of that
Jamal Brown has quite the resume. Revolving door and all of that.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/06/02/tiktok-apolog...
It's not like foreign buyers put down "China Inc" on the purchase forms.
For what it's worth, the formation of an LLC is a state affair, and every state has its own rules around requirements, reporting, transparency, etc. Most states keep the paperwork public; some states don't, but these are not the states where housing shortages are all that profound.
If this hypothetical low income person owned the LLC so that others could operate it, nothing is stopping them from cleaning out the LLC's bank account whenever they want since they own it!
Basically, you can say (in legalese) that X group can’t be the controller of the land. They can open trusts or LLCs or whatever… but it’s transitive so their trust can’t name them as the beneficiaries and their LLCs can’t honor them as shareholders.
There are already laws regarding naming the RPI:
[1] https://definitions.uslegal.com/r/real-party-in-interest/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_party_in_interest
[3] https://www.projectjurisprudence.com/2017/08/whos-real-party...
Mind cancer!
For the good of national security!
Save the children!
What a bunch of rubbish. Go back to school! Wait, you’re screwed there too!
Yeah, no.
And Google and Apple are doing this because... why? Is Bytedance paying them a shitload of money? Are their CEOs secret CCP plants?
If you are concerned about this, how would even refusing to install TikTok protect you? After all, Google and Apple could simply collect the data directly in the OS and send it to Bytedance themselves.
I would recommend looking into some independent thinkers and doing your own research on the collusion between these big companies. There's definitely some out there, however they suspiciously get removed from HN as soon as they're posted.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/bill-banning-texas-land-purch...
Yet, Aramco (Saudi Arabia) purchased the largest oil refinery in the US under his watch. https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/01/investing/saudi-arabia-buys...
Oil infrastructure does not do the same thing that land/housing does.
The USA does not have the same relationship with Saudi Arabia as it does with China (+ NK, Rus, Iran).
Worst comes to worst, anything physically in America owned by a hostile foreign power can be seized, pieces of paper be damned.
It's unfortunate to see this political censorship affect grown adults who can make their own decisions - but just happen to be at a state university.
Even so, that still meet's whatever UT's goal is that it's not on their network. <shrug>
Edit: clearly, the sarcasm intended in wondering if someone was blocking LTE wasn't self-evident. Followed immediately by "Clearly not the case" should have been a clear indicator that it was a bit rhetorical and not something truly being considered.
My local Macy's has found a workaround: thick walls. Ain't no way you're checking the price on Amazon inside their four walls!
1: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/retailers-tracking-shopper...
https://www.shopify.com/retail/the-ultimate-guide-to-using-b...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluet...
I don't really think their marketing team is getting involved in determining the electromagnetic characteristics of the construction materials used in their locations, if much at all. And while Macy's does own a notable amount of property, much of their real estate is leased. And yet more of the property they own, they did not build. The reason that commercial construction from the 1980s interacts with your phone's signal is the same coincidental reason it will likely do the same in 2040: steel and masonry are good for large commercial buildings.
Tiktok really REALLY wants to know your real IP address.
(edit: this comment pertains to the web page through a browser, not the Tiktok app. I did not test the app+vpn.)
Twitter allows read-only access even to suspended accounts as well as when you go over certain rate-limits (I believe there was a daily tweet limit at one point, not sure if still there).
I have an Amplifi router, and i simply linked my phone to it once, and now I can toggle a VPN on my phone with just one click whenever I need it (just like any third-party VPN service), and it will route the connection through my home network.
No complicated setup, the entire first-time setup took a grand total of 2 minutes. And no one else besides me (and my dad, sometimes) uses that VPN endpoint, so it is extremely unlikely to get detected as a VPN by TikTok or any other service (unless they all just decide to ban my residential ip address).
Edit: I think I just realized what made you confused in my original comment. I didn't specify explicitly, but it was implied that I toggle VPN on my phone when I am outside of my home and am connected to a work/public/etc network. Because otherwise, you are correct, trying to VPN through my home network while my phone is actually at home already connected to that network will serve no purpose at all.
[1]: https://eduroam.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/GN3-12-192_ed...
In the mobile era, nearly everything is sanitized and sandboxed. The idea of needing to get all your software through a centralized, vendor-controlled app store would be absurd in the '00s. Yet here we are.
I'm pretty sure most college students browse TikTok via their phones using mobile data. I'm not sure many will even notice it is blocked.
- Turn off WiFi
- Open TikTok on 5G connection
Everyone talking about VPNs is overthinking this.
There are other alternatives like Mint mobile, however they are also expensive. 10 GB costs around $20 monthly excluding taxes.
In short, Mobile data is too expensive in the USA.
There are other MVNOs that are even cheaper, for example Mint is unlimited (35GB of 5G then the rest on LTE) at $30 a month.
Blocking the website is another.
Perhaps someone who sets UT policies doesn't understand the difference?
Or they just don't want the hassle of being targeted by a governor who's looking to score easy points against radical leftist college elites.
Also, I don't know about you, but I find the idea of my own government spying on me just slightly more of an immediate threat then a country I have no plans of ever visiting.
Fixed that for you.
Either way, it's about as big a contrast as is possible with Apple who are all in on China in every way.
If US companies want it to be less popular how about they compete and make a better product? Why are so many people carrying water for social media companies?
To get ahead of the criticism I'll likely get for this comment: I don't think tiktok/china do anything that US companies and every other social media platform have already been doing for years. Why ban tiktok and not every other social media app?
>Why ban tiktok and not every other social media app?
If we banned all software that tracks users, capitalizes on their data, and doesn't respect privacy/GDPR/whatever - the world would be a better place.
..definitely a lot more expensive, but better.
Hm. Is it ok if we will actually block poor people from using internet?
They don't want it to be less popular; the US encourages media monopolies. The larger the better. US government belligerence towards TikTok served the same purpose as US government belligerence towards Twitter and Facebook: leverage in order to be able to censor it and emphasize US narratives.
They won, TikTok is fully censoring based on US government "suggestions," and this state/local-level political grandstanding are people jumping into an operation that is already over.
Did they remove Facebook after it was fined $5bn by the FTC for privacy breaches?
It's completely and utterly political. Just like banning twitter would be, although that actually has more merit than the banning of tiktok.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
This is not how the Internet was supposed to work.
Because the case with TikTok is that we do not know what the Chinese government is going to do with whatever it collects from the app. Or even if they do. Or anything really.
Now, while I think banning TikTok's traffic on the campus network is more of a stunt than anything worthwhile. I do see the argument from banning TikTok and just about any other non-essential app from government issued mobile hardware.
That's an area where you'd want to have as little possible surface area exposed as you can.
However, you aren't explaining why UT-Austin should get to decide which apps (that don't affect network operations or campus device security) people can use on their personal devices on UT-Austin network.
Sure, it technically falls under the very large umbrella of "allowing traffic". No one is disputing that they de-facto have that power. I believe the original question was more along the lines of "how can they reasonably justify doing so without jumping to non-sequeters and bs excuses".
I was just bringing up examples of how I believed those powers should be reasonably used and the kinds of situations they were intended for (in my opinion). And the current situation is not how I believe they should be used, but they technically have the power to do it.
The reciprocal stance by the US would be to allow TikTok but subject it to the same rules Facebook and Twitter and YouTube are subject to.
It's not just China, btw. EU is extra protectionist too. I don't want to be like them.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/14/tech/tiktok-china-data/index.... https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-employees-improperly-acc... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/15/documents...
And a US citizen has much more to lose if their private data is being shared with the US government than with the Chinese government.
Either way, pretty sure no US citizens have been incarcerated in political re-education camps in the USA because of data shared with any government by either Google or Tik Tok or anyone else.
> They definitely turned over data to the US government to help them locate and connect people of interest
Citation?
> Whether you consider incarceration equivalent to re-education is debatable.
It's not, see above.
> I find it quite likely that they also did this for other governments with less scruples about human rights.
Citation?
> pretty sure no US citizens have been incarcerated in political re-education camps
You can be very sure because political re-education camps don't exist. There is a lot to criticize about the American justice system, this isn't applicable.
Absolutely amazing how 'national security' can just turn off all that personal liberties crap as long as the 'national threat' resonates along your political lines.
Do you realize that core principles matter, regardless of who is on the other side, right? That's the whole point of them. Back in the day, the ones on the receiving end were those opposed to the Vietnam war, and they persevered despite the government and the popular sentiment being against them (being accused of hating the america, being communism sympathizers, etc.) If we didn't hold those core principles dear, regardless of those protestors being "anti-american", imo we would be worse off.
Our gymnasium pays for fortiguard so that they can block games on the web. This includes lichess.org etc.
This is a country with non ascii latin letters in the alphabet, but despite this many domains were falsely banned for being an IDN homograph attack.
Cracked minecraft clients are stored on a shared network drive and LAN multiplayer can still be played during boring informatics lessons.
Is blocking websites on the european eduroam allowed? I suppose it is ... ?
It is, unfortunately. Its up to each institution to decide their own network policy.
Eduroam suggests (or at least, did in the past) that the policy should be as permissive as possible, but most institutions block a metric fuckload of shit.
The only network wide blocking suggested is 25/TCP last time I checked, to prevent spam.
Firing a missile is an external action. This is not an external question, this is a question of domestic information policy. It's hypocritical for a nation championing free speech to have a restrictive domestic information policy.
I'm not asking us to hold ourselves to China's standards - that's the lowest bar in the universe. I'm asking us to hold ourselves to our own standards.
How exactly is China banning an app in its domestic market aggression?
You have a very strange definition of aggression.
I think we should definitely ban Bytedance and all Chinese companies until China opens up their economy to the US. I hate Trump and was against a lot but I supported tariffs against Chinese products.
Follow the money. This is political point scoring at its most brazen.
> Yet through Texas’ seven public pension funds, which are fueled primarily by contributions from members but are guaranteed and backed by state taxpayer dollars, $9.12 billion is invested in companies in China, based on a Hearst Newspapers analysis of figures provided by the seven funds — representing a multi-billion dollar bet in the success of the Communist country’s economy.
https://www.expressnews.com/news/legislature/article/Texas-i...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-st...
This is just a token move to make it look like Abbott is 'tough on China'. I see a presidential run in his future.
Seems like the big social media companies might be putting pressure on things to ban TikTok, because they are eating their lunch.
Only Google and Meta should be able to hoover up peoples personal data, and resell it to the Government!
It would be like renting a classroom to hold your bachelor party. Or a homeless person living in the library. That's not what school is for.
Academic institutions are well within their rights to block all kinds of social media, especially when those apps are hogging bandwidth, memory, storage, screen space, or whatever. They're disruptive to the learners who pay tuition and they're a drain on taxpayers and alumni alike.
Good riddance.