The University of British Columbia (UBC) issued a statement last week asking its students to uninstall TikTok from their mobile devices, as part of a ‘cautious’ move, and instead use their mobile browsers to access the social network instead.
TikTok is a popular social media platform that allows users to view and share short-form video content, with suggestions determined by the app’s eerily smart algorithms. UBC says it has become its fastest-growing social media platform, used for entertainment, education, research, outreach, and recruitment purposes.
However, the TikTok app has raised concerns over data collection practices and data sharing due to its parent company ByteDance, based in China.
“While we recognize the security and privacy risks of using TikTok, the nature of these risks has not yet been proven and has not changed overnight,” said UBC spokesman Matthew Ramsey in a statement to The Canadian Press.
UBC says students should “evaluate your activities on all of your social media accounts, including updating your privacy settings and limiting the amount of personal information that you share.” Good luck trying to get students to uninstall popular social media apps, that’s going to go over well. How else will they procrastinate?
Canada recently banned TikTok on government-issued devices, with many provinces and cities following suit. Last month, TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew testified in front of U.S. Congress, with the app’s userbase in the States now around 150 million.
