BOISE, Idaho — Wednesday morning, Boise School District announced they'd be banning and disabling the TikTok app on all school devices and from all school WiFi networks.
This comes after the Idaho legislature upheld the Governor's executive order from December that banned the app.
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Boise School District isn't the first education entity to ban the app from their devices. Boise State University implemented the ban when the Governor delivered his executive order.
TikTok, like other social network sites, profits from the data collected when people use the app.
"We are the product," says Ed Vasko, the Director of the Institute for Pervasive Cybersecurity at Boise State. "How long we're spending on a particular video, who we follow, what time of day we engage with the platform, and where we're engaging with the platform geographically. All of these elements that can be collected about us as individuals can, in aggregate, be leveraged by these large tech platforms to sell advertising."
While all social media platforms do this, Vasko says that TikTok may have another set of risks. Given the app's history in China, Vasko fears as tensions between the U.S. and China rise, the platform could be influenced by China.
“We’ve begun to realize how adversarial that relationship can be," Vasko said. China can potentially mine out the data about US Citizens."
Vasko says there is already a precedent for certain websites being off-limits on government devices. He says that while the government could dictate what is on their government-issued devices, they likely won't be able to determine what people can do on their personal devices.
While students now won't be able to use TikTok on school devices or on school WiFi, the school won't be able to regulate students using their own devices and personal network when using the app.
