TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The University of Florida, Florida State University and Florida A&M have all officially banned apps like TikTok, WeChat and others from being used on their campuses, according to multiple reports.
Officials at The University of South Florida midafternoon Wednesday also emailed its campus community, announcing the college will block access to those applications and others on its network.
University of Florida's student-led newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator, reported that around 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, students were notified they would need to disconnect from the university's Wi-Fi network if they wanted to continue to use apps like TikTok.
This ban follows similar app bans that occurred on Monday at Florida State University and back on March 17 at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
Tallahassee Democrat reported that FSU sent out a university-wide email to notify students, faculty and staff that the ban would be effective immediately Monday after a Florida Board of Governors statewide emergency regulation.
TikTok, Tencent QQ, WeChat, Vkontakte, Kaspersky and Fizz will not be able to be accessed using the university's Wi-Fi.
“Florida State University is committed to protecting our community against potential cyber threats,” FSU Associate Provost for Strategy and Analytics Rick Burnette, who is also interim chief information officer, said in the message according to the newspaper. “This includes putting safety measures in place to protect our faculty, staff and students’ personal data against any potential threats.”
The ban was voted on a proposal that allowed Florida's State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues to block access to websites and social media platforms that could possibly threaten personal privacy and national security, the news outlet reported.
Back in February, the White House announced that all federal agencies had 30 days to wipe TikTok off all government devices.
TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., remains extremely popular and is used by two-thirds of teens in the U.S. But there is increasing concern that Beijing could obtain control of American user data that the app has obtained.
Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data with China’s authoritarian government.
A law China implemented in 2017 requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to the country’s national security. There’s no evidence that TikTok has turned over such data, but fears abound due to the vast amount of user data it collects.