TikTok bans in United States increasing

Several state governments, colleges banning social

By Olivia Pastrick ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Numerous states across the nation have placed bans on the use of TikTok on government devices, according to USA Today. In states such as Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia, for example, colleges are limiting access to TikTok. Indiana is one of the states that has blocked TikTok from state-owned devices as of Dec. 7, 2022, according to WTHR.

These bans in part stem from U.S. legislators' concerns that ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, is based in China, according to USA Today, and could share the information it is gathering from American users with the Chinese government, according to a recent article by Time.

University of Indianapolis freshman psychology major Elyssa Merrill said the bans will not be successful in limiting the use of TikTok on college campuses because they will serve as an inconvenience for students.

“Some things would get altered, but because a lot of people can use cellular data or their own personal devices, it wouldn’t affect the mass population at all,” Merrill said.

According to UIndy Interim Chief Technology Officer for Information Technology Matthew Wilson, there is a valid concern regarding what ByteDance can do with users’ information.

“Certainly all social media companies are collecting [personal] data, and they’re all bound by the jurisdictions in which they’re operating, but the fact that ByteDance is headquartered in China makes them subject to Chinese laws, and China is notorious for being very involved and having oversights for those sorts of companies,” Wilson said.

Wilson said that the main difference between the information that other social media platforms collect and the information that TikTok can collect is the due process laws in the U.S., where other social media companies are based [such as Meta.] Due process laws in China do less to prohibit the government from accessing user information, Wilson said. According to Ballotpedia, substantive due process in the U.S. outlines the restrictions on the government’s ability to infringe upon constitutional liberties regarding privacy such as “personal autonomy, bodily integrity, self-dignity and selfdetermination.” Wilson also said there is a risk in using a platform that is based in China because the Chinese government has different due process laws than those in the United States.

TikTok’s privacy policy states that the company is committed to protecting users’ privacy and explains how and what data it has the ability to collect.

The TikTok privacy policy states, “We share the categories of personal information listed above with service providers and business partners to help us perform business operations and for business purposes, including research, payment processing and