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UT-Austin blocks access to TikTok on campus Wi-Fi networks

VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
I don't care about this kind of stuff as much as a lot of people do. Hopefully they also start blocking China from buying up USA farmland and housing.
- sdfghjkjhvgcfdx 4y ago
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  - seccess 4y ago
    You should. I have no idea to what you're referring.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - maerF0x0 4y ago
    tell him what?
    - 1MachineElf 4y ago
      If I had to guess, it would probably be some revelation about Bill Gates being the biggest private owner of farmland in the US: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-g...
      - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
        I wish he would just grow trees on those properties. For all we know all that land will be used to deploy soylent/fake meat alternative/cricket meat a la "eat the bugs".
- rchaud 4y ago
  A proposal to stop the purchase of property by nameless numbered entities ("123 LLC") would have my full support. It's not like foreign buyers put down "China Inc" on the purchase forms.
  - Quillbert182 4y ago
    It seems to me like it might be a good idea to require citizenship to create an LLC.
    - wombat_trouble 4y ago
      What would that accomplish? Most LLCs are created (incorporated) by a lawyer who then cedes control to the intended owners. Even if you had a requirement for a US person, you'd just have figureheads collecting some nominal salary. Plenty of low-income folks would be eager to get an extra $500 a month for doing nothing. 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.
      - positr0n 4y ago
        > Plenty of low-income folks would be eager to get an extra $500 a month for doing nothing. 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!
        wombat_trouble 4y ago
        It doesn't work that way. An LLC is governed by an operating agreement, and that agreement can specify what actions needs approval from whom. You can have an LLC that is owned by one person and managed by another, and yet another party collects proceeds... sky's the limit, if it's not otherwise illegal, it's fair game.
    - 4y ago
- jeanofthedead 4y ago
  Same. Just don't give apps all of the permissions. TikTok doesn't have access to my camera, photo library, microphone, local network, location, etc. It's not that hard.
  - rcme 4y ago
    Do you also forbid giving TikTok access to your brain? That’s the main issue here.
    - randombits0 4y ago
      Dang, do you know how bad you sound? TikTok may be crack cocaine but it’s just media, protected expression, and beyond consideration for censorship. You let these bastards turn off this app and they will come back and do it again and again. 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!
      - rcme 4y ago
        Is your claim that all media is perfectly fungible so you don’t need to care about its content or origin and that media has no impact on your beliefs and psyche? That doesn’t sound reasonable to me.
        randombits0 4y ago
        No, I’m saying folks can choose what media they want. Are you suggesting that some media is so evil its availability shouldn’t be tolerated? Yeah, no.
        rcme 4y ago
        No, I'm not claiming that media is so evil it can't be tolerated. I'm claiming that there is a national security risk to letting an adversary control the information flow to the population. This has nothing to do with the contents of the media itself.
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  Governor Abbott is supporting that bill at the moment https://www.dailywire.com/news/bill-banning-texas-land-purchases-by-certain-adversarial-nations-gains-support-of-abbott 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-largest-oil-refinery-port-arthur/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/01/investing/saudi-arabia-buys...
  - hnburnsy 4y ago
    Self deleted
  - gretch 4y ago
    It’s a not a contradiction. 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).
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Why? They'll pay us to buy the land and if they fight us, we just take it. This is ideal: they give us money to own in name something that we will own in practice.
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Why? Worst comes to worst, anything physically in America owned by a hostile foreign power can be seized, pieces of paper be damned.
remarkEon 4y ago
>"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. "We're especially sorry to see the unintended consequences of these rushed policies beginning to impact universities' ability to share information, recruit students, and build communities around athletic teams, student groups, campus publications, and more." Jamal Brown has quite the resume. Revolving door and all of that. https://twitter.com/JTOBrown https://twitter.com/JTOBrown
- NickC25 4y ago
  He's a lobbyist by any other definition of the word. "Spokesman" is kind of a cop-out to deliberately undersell why he's working with TikTok/Bytedance.
- throwaway29812 4y ago
  Quite incredible he can go from DoD spokesperson to working at TikTok. I guess there's no law against it, but incredible personal choice.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    Everyone has a price, and I assume Bytedance knows how valuable having a former DoD spokesman as their PR guy is - especially in this new environment of geopolitical realism. Whatever that price was, I think it's safe to assume it was met.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    A job's a job. A DOD spokesperson isn't receiving any confidential information. Their job is political, just as it would be at Facebook, if they chose to work there.
  - rockinghigh 4y ago
    In the same vein, Michael Flynn went from being a US Army lieutenant general to a foreign agent lobbying for governments like Turkey.
mybhslaptop 4y ago
High schoolers are used to having VPNs for school, time for college students to do that too. Especially since on-campus students have to live with managed WiFi in dorms too. 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.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  They did make their own decision. They connected to a network which has some content filtered. I'd imagine porn, gore sites, etc are - if not blocked - logged.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Or they can just toggle the wifi on their phone. When I was in school, wifi wasn't provided and you were prohibited from bringing your own AP. And there were plenty of applications being firewalled.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    I was wondering if LTE was also blocked for some reason causing everyone that be forced to use WiFi. Clearly, that's not the case. Are people unable to make the logical jump that WiFi isn't needed on mobile? 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.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      UT-Austin doesn't operate commercial cell phone service, and jamming cell phone service is illegal.
      - gnicholas 4y ago
        > jamming cell phone service is illegal. 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!
droopyEyelids 4y ago
Does anyone know how to check Gov. Greg Abbott for donations from Facebook/Facebook controlled PACs?
- heliophobicdude 4y ago
  I don't immediately have an answer for you about donations, but there's this old WSJ piece about meetings Facebook had with key politicians: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-stoked-washingtons-fears-about-tiktok-11598223133 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-st...
- symlinkk 4y ago
  https://www.opensecrets.org/officeholders/greg-abbott/contributors?cycle=2022&id=11281947 https://www.opensecrets.org/officeholders/greg-abbott/contri...
- rchaud 4y ago
  I don't think Facebook cares about picking up some market share from the handful of users of TX state-funded Internet. This is just a token move to make it look like Abbott is 'tough on China'. I see a presidential run in his future.
- mikrotikker 4y ago
  Yea it would be great to know better ways to donate to him.
VLM 4y ago
The new satanic panic.
- aaron695 4y ago
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- tarotuser 4y ago
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  - deleted 4y ago
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  - throwaway29812 4y ago
    Citing the very real and horrible history of ethnic discrimination to dismiss valid criticism of an authoritarian state is odd. It's also exactly what the CCP does. https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1464891227694850049 https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1464891227694850049 https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/stopasianhate-chinese-diaspora-targeted-by-ccp-disinformation-campaign/ https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/stopasianhate-chinese-dias...
    - tarotuser 4y ago
      I'm not sure what you're trying to get at. Looking narrowly at Tiktok, it doesn't really capture any more than what Google/Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Linkedin all would. And regulators and orgs are OK with those systems hoovering up all the data they can. But when Tiktok showed up, it's the "China Restaurant Syndrome" all over again, with breathless scares about the evil Chinese stealing our data! Yes, China is a communist party-led state, according to the CIA world factbook. Yes, they have terrible abuses in their own history. Yes, they tamp down dissent via black-bagging and other abuses. Yes, they have and continue to do a genocide on the Uighurs (Muslims) in the country. The US peoples (separate from the government) also has a pretty bad case of anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment. It was only a few days ago that some 50ish year old white lady stabbed an Asian 18 year old Indiana University student on the city bus, while stating to police “it would be one less person to blow up our country”. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/16/us/indiana-university-student-stabbed-race/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/16/us/indiana-university-student... This isn't a case of whataboutism. What the Chinese government are doing to their own people is abhorrent, and likely worthy of being charged with crimes against humanity. AND people who hate Chinese for being Chinese heritage are also just as wrong. (And while we're at it, the USA has done its share of abhorrent stuff that it too should be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.) It may be simple to color every situation with black or white. But there's a great deal of nuance here. Why isn't UT-Austin also blocking Google or Facebook and related properties? Is that because they're USA based companies? Why only Tiktok? Because where I am, it appears to be founded in Sinophobia, pure and simple.
shapefrog 4y ago
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- red-iron-pine 4y ago
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- Quillbert182 4y ago
  There is no freedom of international trade enshrined anywhere in the U.S. governmental system.
jrexilius 4y ago
A good, albeit somewhat impotent, move. The companies wont yank it from the app stores in the US for fear of reprisal, but that is the better next step.
- deleted 4y ago
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- causi 4y ago
  The companies wont yank it from the app stores in the US for fear of losing their cut of ad revenue but that is the better next step. Fixed that for you.
  - jrexilius 4y ago
    The revenue from TikTok is minscule compared to losing access the Chinese market. That is the bigger risk they face.
    - tomComb 4y ago
      Google has zero revenue from China. They pulled out of China when told they would have to censor search results years ago. Android phones in China don’t use Google’s android.
      - throw48274853 4y ago
        In 2018, Google made $3 billion in China from Chinese companies buying ads.
        tomComb 4y ago
        I guess then I should say they made nothing in China - those Chinese companies buying ads would have been for ads outside of China. Either way, it's about as big a contrast as is possible with Apple who are all in on China in every way.
- 4y ago
guessbest 4y ago
> In a statement, a representative from TikTok said they are disappointed by the news. > "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.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  Obviously someone should've just hosted right-wing talking heads on TikTok so that UT-Austin could be sued under Texas' own anti-censorship law: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/texas-bans-online-censorship-with-law-similar-to-one-already-blocked-in-florida/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/texas-bans-onlin...
  - pavlov 4y ago
    I’m sure there are plenty of right-wing influencers on TikTok. It’s a service that locks you tightly into an algorithmic bubble once it has an idea of what kind of content turns you on. Alt-right TikTok in Texas must be “interesting.”
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    Somewhere a TikTok lawyer is writing a frantic email.
  - klyrs 4y ago
    > ...should've just hosted right-wing talking heads on TikTok... That's already a thing... https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-recommendations-far-right-wing https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-recommendations-far-righ...
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    They're already there. You just don't know it because the algo creates a textbook filter bubble to keep you happy. 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.
temende 4y ago
So if they care about data harvesting, are they also blocking Facebook?
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  Data harvesting to China is what these people care about
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    It's a move designed to garner political points and take advantage of the China-related fear-mongering. They don't actually give a shit about your privacy otherwise they would indeed block Facebook and other equally-malicious US-based spyware operators.
    - guilhas 4y ago
      Same for youngs mental health
    - eddsh1994 4y ago
      It’s not just political points; for example I’m not allowed the app on my personal devices as part of a work contract if I use the same device for anything work related (web emails etc). Nothing to gain there politically. I’m pretty sure Facebook doesn’t send your clipboard to the US government, anyway?
  - kerpotgh 4y ago
    Which is perfectly reasonable to me.
  - 7sidedmarble 4y ago
    Why should it matter to me who is spying on me rather than being spied on at all? 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.
root_axis 4y ago
I think it's a good idea. Add twitter, insta, and fb to the list as well.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
zugi 4y ago
Banning the app on government (including university) devices is one thing. Blocking the website is another. Perhaps someone who sets UT policies doesn't understand the difference?
- verdverm 4y ago
  Governments and businesses block sites on their network all the time for a variety of reasons. This is just adding an entry to a list. They block ports and bandwidth shape as well
  - theturtletalks 4y ago
    I learned this the hard way. Biked 5 miles to go work at the library and when I tried connecting to my Postgres DB, the connection was blocked.
- rchaud 4y ago
  > 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.
- marmetio 4y ago
  Blocking a website on government networking devices is the same thing. The goal is to deny the Chinese government access to Americans via government-owned equipment.
purpleblue 4y ago
Does China allow Instagram and Facebook in the country?
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  It's Great (Fire) Walled
  - dylan604 4y ago
    right, so tit for tat was I'm pretty the GP's point
  - rchaud 4y ago
    "It's bigger in Texas"
- snapcaster 4y ago
  Do you want your government to behave the same way as the CCP?
  - Quillbert182 4y ago
    I would like them to treat the CCP as a malicious entity.
  - flappyeagle 4y ago
    Yes. If they launch a missile, send a missile back.
    - vkou 4y ago
      And if they round up and arrest political and religious dissidents, we should do the same? We can't lose the repression arms race to China, after all... 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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thebigman433 4y ago
Montana State University has also done the same, including residence hall internet.
mullingitover 4y ago
All this really does is add a three second step to their students' day: - Turn off WiFi - Open TikTok on 5G connection Everyone talking about VPNs is overthinking this.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  and then once you realize how much data it eats, you'll see why they wanted to disable it in the first place
  - s0ulphire 4y ago
    Serious question, does anyone really struggle with staying under their data limit anymore? I pay $28AUD a month and get 85GB, and I use about 20 of that per month?
    - potatochup 4y ago
      American plans are generally a lot more expensive. Take a look at ATNT for example.
    - cute_boi 4y ago
      In America, for unlimited it costs $80 on Verizon. With 5 lines it decreased to $30. 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.
      - mullingitover 4y ago
        I pay $65 for unlimited on straight talk, which is on Verizon's network. I could get it cheaper if I gave up tethering or shared a plan. 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.
        mdrzn 4y ago
guilhas 4y ago
Why can't the US just accept they lost this one, and just put the effort into creating the next big thing before China does it again?
jesprenj 4y ago
Offtopic, sharing a story: 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 ... ?
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  > 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.
- titanomachy 4y ago
  In case anyone else was confused, the word "gymnasium" is used for "high school" in some countries (e.g. Germany).
wutheringh 4y ago
[flagged]
genderwhy 4y ago
Banning this is the right move for the wrong reasons, imo. TikTok (and Youtube shorts) are both terribly addictive and we should make sure we understand their impacts on developing (and developed) minds before just opening the floodgates to them.
robotburrito 4y ago
Hard to feel bad for TikTok when I couldn't access any of my western services while visiting China.
vondur 4y ago
Probably a moot point for the most part. Most students will have their own data plans on their phones. Maybe in some classrooms that's not possible. Futhermore, TikTok should be banned... (Carthago Delenda Est)
cokeandpepsi 4y ago
as long as they don't ban the sugardaddy apps I don't care what UT Austin does
hot_gril 4y ago
Funny, when I was Googling around for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34421594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34421594 , I stumbled across several questions about how to block TikTok in a router.
Eleison23 4y ago
Aside from the unnamed security risks the admins mention, Texas A&M undoubtedly has an Acceptable Use Policy in place for their campus networks, and this would be an AUP that restricts usage to academic type only. Technically it is against the rules of any university or college or school to be using non-academic, frivolous apps like these, by way of academic resources. 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.
b3nji 4y ago
What about the others? 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!

I don't care about this kind of stuff as much as a lot of people do. Hopefully they also start blocking China from buying up USA farmland and housing.

sdfghjkjhvgcfdx 4y ago
[flagged]
- seccess 4y ago
  You should. I have no idea to what you're referring.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- maerF0x0 4y ago
  tell him what?
  - 1MachineElf 4y ago
    If I had to guess, it would probably be some revelation about Bill Gates being the biggest private owner of farmland in the US: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-g...
    - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
      I wish he would just grow trees on those properties. For all we know all that land will be used to deploy soylent/fake meat alternative/cricket meat a la "eat the bugs".
rchaud 4y ago
A proposal to stop the purchase of property by nameless numbered entities ("123 LLC") would have my full support. It's not like foreign buyers put down "China Inc" on the purchase forms.
- Quillbert182 4y ago
  It seems to me like it might be a good idea to require citizenship to create an LLC.
  - wombat_trouble 4y ago
    What would that accomplish? Most LLCs are created (incorporated) by a lawyer who then cedes control to the intended owners. Even if you had a requirement for a US person, you'd just have figureheads collecting some nominal salary. Plenty of low-income folks would be eager to get an extra $500 a month for doing nothing. 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.
    - positr0n 4y ago
      > Plenty of low-income folks would be eager to get an extra $500 a month for doing nothing. 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!
      - wombat_trouble 4y ago
        It doesn't work that way. An LLC is governed by an operating agreement, and that agreement can specify what actions needs approval from whom. You can have an LLC that is owned by one person and managed by another, and yet another party collects proceeds... sky's the limit, if it's not otherwise illegal, it's fair game.
  - 4y ago
jeanofthedead 4y ago
Same. Just don't give apps all of the permissions. TikTok doesn't have access to my camera, photo library, microphone, local network, location, etc. It's not that hard.
- rcme 4y ago
  Do you also forbid giving TikTok access to your brain? That’s the main issue here.
  - randombits0 4y ago
    Dang, do you know how bad you sound? TikTok may be crack cocaine but it’s just media, protected expression, and beyond consideration for censorship. You let these bastards turn off this app and they will come back and do it again and again. 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!
    - rcme 4y ago
      Is your claim that all media is perfectly fungible so you don’t need to care about its content or origin and that media has no impact on your beliefs and psyche? That doesn’t sound reasonable to me.
      - randombits0 4y ago
        No, I’m saying folks can choose what media they want. Are you suggesting that some media is so evil its availability shouldn’t be tolerated? Yeah, no.
        rcme 4y ago
        No, I'm not claiming that media is so evil it can't be tolerated. I'm claiming that there is a national security risk to letting an adversary control the information flow to the population. This has nothing to do with the contents of the media itself.
twobitshifter 4y ago
Governor Abbott is supporting that bill at the moment https://www.dailywire.com/news/bill-banning-texas-land-purchases-by-certain-adversarial-nations-gains-support-of-abbott 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-largest-oil-refinery-port-arthur/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/01/investing/saudi-arabia-buys...
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  Self deleted
- gretch 4y ago
  It’s a not a contradiction. 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).
renewiltord 4y ago
Why? They'll pay us to buy the land and if they fight us, we just take it. This is ideal: they give us money to own in name something that we will own in practice.
mannerheim 4y ago
Why? Worst comes to worst, anything physically in America owned by a hostile foreign power can be seized, pieces of paper be damned.

remarkEon 4y ago

>"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. "We're especially sorry to see the unintended consequences of these rushed policies beginning to impact universities' ability to share information, recruit students, and build communities around athletic teams, student groups, campus publications, and more." Jamal Brown has quite the resume. Revolving door and all of that. https://twitter.com/JTOBrown https://twitter.com/JTOBrown

NickC25 4y ago
He's a lobbyist by any other definition of the word. "Spokesman" is kind of a cop-out to deliberately undersell why he's working with TikTok/Bytedance.
throwaway29812 4y ago
Quite incredible he can go from DoD spokesperson to working at TikTok. I guess there's no law against it, but incredible personal choice.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  Everyone has a price, and I assume Bytedance knows how valuable having a former DoD spokesman as their PR guy is - especially in this new environment of geopolitical realism. Whatever that price was, I think it's safe to assume it was met.
- rchaud 4y ago
  A job's a job. A DOD spokesperson isn't receiving any confidential information. Their job is political, just as it would be at Facebook, if they chose to work there.
- rockinghigh 4y ago
  In the same vein, Michael Flynn went from being a US Army lieutenant general to a foreign agent lobbying for governments like Turkey.

mybhslaptop 4y ago

High schoolers are used to having VPNs for school, time for college students to do that too. Especially since on-campus students have to live with managed WiFi in dorms too. 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.

TheHappyOddish 4y ago
They did make their own decision. They connected to a network which has some content filtered. I'd imagine porn, gore sites, etc are - if not blocked - logged.
kube-system 4y ago
Or they can just toggle the wifi on their phone. When I was in school, wifi wasn't provided and you were prohibited from bringing your own AP. And there were plenty of applications being firewalled.
- dylan604 4y ago
  I was wondering if LTE was also blocked for some reason causing everyone that be forced to use WiFi. Clearly, that's not the case. Are people unable to make the logical jump that WiFi isn't needed on mobile? 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.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    UT-Austin doesn't operate commercial cell phone service, and jamming cell phone service is illegal.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      > jamming cell phone service is illegal. 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!

droopyEyelids 4y ago

Does anyone know how to check Gov. Greg Abbott for donations from Facebook/Facebook controlled PACs?

heliophobicdude 4y ago
I don't immediately have an answer for you about donations, but there's this old WSJ piece about meetings Facebook had with key politicians: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-stoked-washingtons-fears-about-tiktok-11598223133 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-st...
symlinkk 4y ago
https://www.opensecrets.org/officeholders/greg-abbott/contributors?cycle=2022&id=11281947 https://www.opensecrets.org/officeholders/greg-abbott/contri...
rchaud 4y ago
I don't think Facebook cares about picking up some market share from the handful of users of TX state-funded Internet. This is just a token move to make it look like Abbott is 'tough on China'. I see a presidential run in his future.
mikrotikker 4y ago
Yea it would be great to know better ways to donate to him.

VLM 4y ago

The new satanic panic.

aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
tarotuser 4y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway29812 4y ago
  Citing the very real and horrible history of ethnic discrimination to dismiss valid criticism of an authoritarian state is odd. It's also exactly what the CCP does. https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1464891227694850049 https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1464891227694850049 https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/stopasianhate-chinese-diaspora-targeted-by-ccp-disinformation-campaign/ https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/stopasianhate-chinese-dias...
  - tarotuser 4y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to get at. Looking narrowly at Tiktok, it doesn't really capture any more than what Google/Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Linkedin all would. And regulators and orgs are OK with those systems hoovering up all the data they can. But when Tiktok showed up, it's the "China Restaurant Syndrome" all over again, with breathless scares about the evil Chinese stealing our data! Yes, China is a communist party-led state, according to the CIA world factbook. Yes, they have terrible abuses in their own history. Yes, they tamp down dissent via black-bagging and other abuses. Yes, they have and continue to do a genocide on the Uighurs (Muslims) in the country. The US peoples (separate from the government) also has a pretty bad case of anti-Asian and anti-Chinese sentiment. It was only a few days ago that some 50ish year old white lady stabbed an Asian 18 year old Indiana University student on the city bus, while stating to police “it would be one less person to blow up our country”. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/16/us/indiana-university-student-stabbed-race/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/16/us/indiana-university-student... This isn't a case of whataboutism. What the Chinese government are doing to their own people is abhorrent, and likely worthy of being charged with crimes against humanity. AND people who hate Chinese for being Chinese heritage are also just as wrong. (And while we're at it, the USA has done its share of abhorrent stuff that it too should be charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.) It may be simple to color every situation with black or white. But there's a great deal of nuance here. Why isn't UT-Austin also blocking Google or Facebook and related properties? Is that because they're USA based companies? Why only Tiktok? Because where I am, it appears to be founded in Sinophobia, pure and simple.

shapefrog 4y ago

[flagged]

red-iron-pine 4y ago
[flagged]
Quillbert182 4y ago
There is no freedom of international trade enshrined anywhere in the U.S. governmental system.

jrexilius 4y ago

A good, albeit somewhat impotent, move. The companies wont yank it from the app stores in the US for fear of reprisal, but that is the better next step.

deleted 4y ago
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causi 4y ago
The companies wont yank it from the app stores in the US for fear of losing their cut of ad revenue but that is the better next step. Fixed that for you.
- jrexilius 4y ago
  The revenue from TikTok is minscule compared to losing access the Chinese market. That is the bigger risk they face.
  - tomComb 4y ago
    Google has zero revenue from China. They pulled out of China when told they would have to censor search results years ago. Android phones in China don’t use Google’s android.
    - throw48274853 4y ago
      In 2018, Google made $3 billion in China from Chinese companies buying ads.
      - tomComb 4y ago
        I guess then I should say they made nothing in China - those Chinese companies buying ads would have been for ads outside of China. Either way, it's about as big a contrast as is possible with Apple who are all in on China in every way.
4y ago

guessbest 4y ago

> In a statement, a representative from TikTok said they are disappointed by the news. > "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.

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
Obviously someone should've just hosted right-wing talking heads on TikTok so that UT-Austin could be sued under Texas' own anti-censorship law: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/texas-bans-online-censorship-with-law-similar-to-one-already-blocked-in-florida/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/texas-bans-onlin...
- pavlov 4y ago
  I’m sure there are plenty of right-wing influencers on TikTok. It’s a service that locks you tightly into an algorithmic bubble once it has an idea of what kind of content turns you on. Alt-right TikTok in Texas must be “interesting.”
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  Somewhere a TikTok lawyer is writing a frantic email.
- klyrs 4y ago
  > ...should've just hosted right-wing talking heads on TikTok... That's already a thing... https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-recommendations-far-right-wing https://mashable.com/article/tiktok-recommendations-far-righ...
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  They're already there. You just don't know it because the algo creates a textbook filter bubble to keep you happy. 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.

temende 4y ago

So if they care about data harvesting, are they also blocking Facebook?

eddsh1994 4y ago
Data harvesting to China is what these people care about
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  It's a move designed to garner political points and take advantage of the China-related fear-mongering. They don't actually give a shit about your privacy otherwise they would indeed block Facebook and other equally-malicious US-based spyware operators.
  - guilhas 4y ago
    Same for youngs mental health
  - eddsh1994 4y ago
    It’s not just political points; for example I’m not allowed the app on my personal devices as part of a work contract if I use the same device for anything work related (web emails etc). Nothing to gain there politically. I’m pretty sure Facebook doesn’t send your clipboard to the US government, anyway?
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  Which is perfectly reasonable to me.
- 7sidedmarble 4y ago
  Why should it matter to me who is spying on me rather than being spied on at all? 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.

root_axis 4y ago

I think it's a good idea. Add twitter, insta, and fb to the list as well.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

zugi 4y ago

Banning the app on government (including university) devices is one thing. Blocking the website is another. Perhaps someone who sets UT policies doesn't understand the difference?

verdverm 4y ago
Governments and businesses block sites on their network all the time for a variety of reasons. This is just adding an entry to a list. They block ports and bandwidth shape as well
- theturtletalks 4y ago
  I learned this the hard way. Biked 5 miles to go work at the library and when I tried connecting to my Postgres DB, the connection was blocked.
rchaud 4y ago
> 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.
marmetio 4y ago
Blocking a website on government networking devices is the same thing. The goal is to deny the Chinese government access to Americans via government-owned equipment.

purpleblue 4y ago

Does China allow Instagram and Facebook in the country?

eddsh1994 4y ago
It's Great (Fire) Walled
- dylan604 4y ago
  right, so tit for tat was I'm pretty the GP's point
- rchaud 4y ago
  "It's bigger in Texas"
snapcaster 4y ago
Do you want your government to behave the same way as the CCP?
- Quillbert182 4y ago
  I would like them to treat the CCP as a malicious entity.
- flappyeagle 4y ago
  Yes. If they launch a missile, send a missile back.
  - vkou 4y ago
    And if they round up and arrest political and religious dissidents, we should do the same? We can't lose the repression arms race to China, after all... 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.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thebigman433 4y ago

Montana State University has also done the same, including residence hall internet.

mullingitover 4y ago

All this really does is add a three second step to their students' day: - Turn off WiFi - Open TikTok on 5G connection Everyone talking about VPNs is overthinking this.

LesZedCB 4y ago
and then once you realize how much data it eats, you'll see why they wanted to disable it in the first place
- s0ulphire 4y ago
  Serious question, does anyone really struggle with staying under their data limit anymore? I pay $28AUD a month and get 85GB, and I use about 20 of that per month?
  - potatochup 4y ago
    American plans are generally a lot more expensive. Take a look at ATNT for example.
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    In America, for unlimited it costs $80 on Verizon. With 5 lines it decreased to $30. 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.
    - mullingitover 4y ago
      I pay $65 for unlimited on straight talk, which is on Verizon's network. I could get it cheaper if I gave up tethering or shared a plan. 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.
      - mdrzn 4y ago

guilhas 4y ago

Why can't the US just accept they lost this one, and just put the effort into creating the next big thing before China does it again?

jesprenj 4y ago

Offtopic, sharing a story: 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 ... ?

nibbleshifter 4y ago
> 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.
titanomachy 4y ago
In case anyone else was confused, the word "gymnasium" is used for "high school" in some countries (e.g. Germany).

wutheringh 4y ago

[flagged]

genderwhy 4y ago

Banning this is the right move for the wrong reasons, imo. TikTok (and Youtube shorts) are both terribly addictive and we should make sure we understand their impacts on developing (and developed) minds before just opening the floodgates to them.

robotburrito 4y ago

Hard to feel bad for TikTok when I couldn't access any of my western services while visiting China.

vondur 4y ago

Probably a moot point for the most part. Most students will have their own data plans on their phones. Maybe in some classrooms that's not possible. Futhermore, TikTok should be banned... (Carthago Delenda Est)

cokeandpepsi 4y ago

as long as they don't ban the sugardaddy apps I don't care what UT Austin does

hot_gril 4y ago

Funny, when I was Googling around for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34421594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34421594 , I stumbled across several questions about how to block TikTok in a router.

Eleison23 4y ago

Aside from the unnamed security risks the admins mention, Texas A&M undoubtedly has an Acceptable Use Policy in place for their campus networks, and this would be an AUP that restricts usage to academic type only. Technically it is against the rules of any university or college or school to be using non-academic, frivolous apps like these, by way of academic resources. 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.

b3nji 4y ago

What about the others? 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!