TikTok goes to detention

Hiya, it’s Alex in Los Angeles. A TikTok ban became real, at least for many thousands of US college students. But first...Today’s must-reads [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( Hiya, it’s Alex in Los Angeles. A TikTok ban became real, at least for many thousands of US college students. But first... Today’s must-reads: • [Google will cut 12,000 jobs]( • [Walmart.com is going after small businesses]( • [GM and LG abandoned plans for an EV battery plant]( TikTok 101 A new ban on TikTok at many state colleges around the US offers a snippet of what the Biden administration would be in for if it instituted a nationwide blackout: lots of angry young people. More than 25 states have placed restrictions on the use of TikTok on state-owned equipment in recent weeks, and those restrictions have extended in some cases to public schools. Over a dozen major higher-education systems, including Auburn University, the University of Georgia and Oklahoma State University, recently banned TikTok in some form — from school-owned devices, the campus networks or both. Last week, the University of Texas, Austin, joined the fray. The college, with more than 52,000 students, blocked TikTok from campus internet. Students were, predictably, unhappy. Grace Featherston, a 22-year-old senior theater-education major at the university, said people should be able to make their own decision about the risks of using a Chinese-owned app. The ban is an encroachment on students’ personal freedoms, she said. “It’s the choice of US citizens, whether they want to consume TikTok,” she said, “and whether they want to take that risk.” Even some university staff objected to the move. “I use TikTok as an educational tool to make science fun and accessible,” said Kate Biberdorf, 36, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin. She’s known to her 194,400 TikTok followers as Kate the Chemist. “To have that tool be taken away by a university, that doesn’t sit right with me. Right now in our community, it feels like our rights are being taken away, and this is another push in the wrong direction.” Security concerns shouldn’t be entirely overlooked, said Rick McElroy, principal security strategist at VMware Inc. The volumes of personal information collected by an app like TikTok could be used by a company or government to track or target prominent people with misinformation or influence campaigns, he said. TikTok has said it doesn’t share data with the Chinese government and has strict access controls on user data for its employees and those of its [parent]( company, ByteDance Ltd. Yet, last month, ByteDance said some employees improperly accessed American user data in an attempt to track journalists. Deciding the fate of TikTok is especially risky for politicians. The app’s main demographic is the same group of young people that have become one of the most important for the US Democratic party. Voters under 30 were the only age group in the 2022 US midterm election where the [majority]( favored Democrats — and did so with an astounding 28-point margin, according to Tufts University. They appeared to be, in effect, the dam that stopped the red wave. Featherston, the theater major, uses TikTok to watch and post videos for her 27,000 followers about Broadway shows, social trends and current events. She echoed the views of more than three-dozen TikTok creators and users I’ve interviewed in the past few months. She said she’s generally aware of the risks but not worried enough to stop using it. The value Featherston gets from TikTok — internet celebrity, entertainment, affirmation — outweighs the threat to her from a foreign government, she said. Retaining her access to TikTok will be a policy consideration when the next election rolls around. —[Alex Barinka](mailto:abarinka2@bloomberg.net) The big story Layoffs at Amazon and Microsoft are dealing a blow to Seattle, as [America’s second-largest tech hub is struggling to reopen]( downtown businesses that shuttered during the pandemic. Get fully charged Apple challenged the UK antitrust watchdog's investigation into its [dominance over the mobile browser market](. 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