UBC has encouraged students to uninstall TikTok over privacy and safety concerns.
A statement from the UBC website suggests the app’s data collection and sharing practices are the primary concerns because the parent company, ByteDance, is based in China.
For some added context, UBC still has an active TikTok account, but it hasn’t been posted since it asked students to uninstall the app.
UBC students have been talking about the new guidance on Reddit.
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In the Reddit post, one user shared a more extensive statement from Jim Galvao, the director of communications and marketing for the faculty of pharmaceutical sciences at UBC, suggesting the university is “monitoring the situation closely.”
The statement says, “we encourage you to take safety precautions by uninstalling the TikTok app from your devices and using your web browser to access content instead.”
The top comment in the Reddit post is, “UBC will probably post a TikTok about this.”
For the most part, students have not taken kindly to the news, pointing out that the guidance is hypocritical in some ways.
“The school openly has WeChat accounts so… when is it okay for apps to be owned by the Chinese government? Only when Westerners aren’t using them?”
Others pointed out that what TikTok is doing isn’t that much worse than what companies like Google or Meta have been doing “for years.”
“I’m so glad I can offer my private information to Meta instead,” another user quipped.
One Redditor suggested it was a good move because “most TikTok content is so cringe and low quality.”
We asked UBC for a statement, but it referred us to the guidance posted here, which states, “The Government of Canada has issued a ban on the use of TikTok on government-issued devices, and provincial governments have followed suit.”
The statement adds, “We also recommend that you evaluate your activities on all your social media accounts, including updating your privacy settings and limiting the amount of personal information you share.”
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