Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

texastribune.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 250 posts

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

#111

Post by amadeuspagel »

rapind wrote: post #105
pessimizer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty easy to do; to characterize nationalist censorship in terms of trivialities. I could literally use being "built for advertisers to push products and services through ads and influencers" to ban television, newspapers, and every social network.

> ban ________ television, newspapers, and every social network… ^ “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?

People have been lamenting the decline of local news due to craigslist replacing classifieds for a long time.

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

#112

Post by LesZedCB »

mullingitover wrote: post #108

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.

and then once you realize how much data it eats, you'll see why they wanted to disable it in the first place

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

#113

Post by kube-system »

gnicholas wrote: post #96
kube-system wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UT-Austin doesn't operate commercial cell phone service, and jamming cell phone service is illegal.

> 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!

Jokes aside, the walls are probably thick because Simon Property Group gets better insurance rates.

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

#114

Post by flappyeagle »

vkou wrote: post #107
flappyeagle wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If they launch a missile, send a missile back.

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.

Economic sanctions is an external action. Tariffs are a thing that exist. It's not by any means "repression", so please don't make the argument lame by taking it there.

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

#115

Post by rockinghigh »

throwaway29812 wrote: post #37
remarkEon wrote: post #2

>"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…

Quite incredible he can go from DoD spokesperson to working at TikTok. I guess there's no law against it, but incredible personal choice.

In the same vein, Michael Flynn went from being a US Army lieutenant general to a foreign agent lobbying for governments like Turkey.

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

#118

Post by jeanofthedead »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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

#119

Post by nibbleshifter »

jesprenj wrote: post #110

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 ...

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.

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

#120

Post by BudaDude »

LarryMullins wrote: post #41
BudaDude wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those endpoints could also be blocked for legitimate reasons. Many use common VPN endpoints for malicious intentions.

The "legitimate reason" is that knowing information about their users is TikTok's business model.

It's also the business model of Google, Meta, Microsoft, and dozens of tech companies that are used everyday by users here without batting an eye. What is your point?
Post reply on HN