Syed Imran Haider 
Following the ban threat on TikTok by the U.S. government, public universities in the country have begun prohibiting the app on their networks and employee devices. Now two of U. S’s largest colleges: Texas A&M University and the University of Texas, have also followed the trend. These largest colleges have taken action against the Chinese social app owned by ByteDance.
The recent universities to join the trend of banning TikTok got inspiration from many state governors issuing similar orders regarding the app. Many public universities in the U.S. states like Florida, Idaho, South Dakota, Arkansas, and Alabama have gone against short video apps in the last few months. Georgia and Texas are the latest ones to take measures to limit access to TikTok, banning it from school-owned devices and campus Wi-Fi networks.
Texas Bans TikTok
In December 2022, Greg Abbott, the Texas Governor, ordered state agencies to block TikTok from administration devices. Like others, he also cited privacy and security concerns from the app’s Beijing-based ownership. The governor characterized security concerns as increasing threats. He also gave agencies time until February to strategize around the changes emerging following the ban.
Jeff Neyland is an advisor to the President for Tech Strategy at the University of Texas. He believes the university has taken these steps to diminish risks to the information stored on the university’s Wi-Fi network and its critical infrastructure. He said TikTok produces massive amounts of data from its users’ gadgets. It even identifies when, how, and where the app users perform online activities.
Neyland accused the popular social media of offering this potentially sensitive data to the Chinese administration. According to a Texas A&M representative, the university’s employees, faculty, students, and visitors cannot use TikTok through the A&M Wi-Fi Network.
TikTok Texas A&M Account
TikTok is still in a contradictory state in the United States since the beginning of 2023. While the app regularly gets to the top ranks in the U.S. charts, it faces intense scrutiny at the state and federal levels.
In December 2022, the Biden administration blocked TikTok on government devices through a bill.
Christopher Wray, the FBI Director, raised concerns over the app’s potential to collect users’ data and spread Chinese effect operations almost at the same time. A government, which does not share its values, has all these things in its hand. “That administration has the ambition to work in the best interest of the U.S. government”, he noted.
The U.S. administration also seems, running its covert influence operations on numerous social media apps. The American tech companies did not help that conduct running afoul of the app’s policies. The apps headquartered in the United States have more resources to push back against administration requests and more transparency relationships.
Most tech researchers and analysts consider the Biden government’s concerns about the tech’s Chinese ownership as extended worries rooted in the U.S. administration in Trump’s era. Donald Trump tried to influence ByteDance to vend TikTok’s U.S. operation to Oracle, a U.S.-based tech organization, but we saw those unprecedented efforts falling apart over time.
