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FORGET BANNING TIKTOK; JUST GIVE NIAGARA'S MUNICIPAL WORKERS FLIP PHONES

CIVIL SERVANTS DON'T NEED TIME WASTING APPS ON THEIR WORK PHONES, WRITES JAMES CULIC

James Culic is the Fort Erie Race Track's marketing guy. He's also Niagara This Week's columnist and his mother-in-law's lasagna recipe is A+ perfection. Email him at james.culic@gmail.com or holler on Twitter @jamesculic.

Take a peek at my email inbox and you'll find plenty of readers who accuse me of "not knowing what I'm talking about" each week when I write about this or that or whatever.

This time, though, that is going to be absolutely true as I literally do not know what I'm talking about because this week's topic is TikTok. I do not know much about TikTok. I doubt it even works on my phone; I'm currently using a BlackBerry KeyOne — yes, a BlackBerry in 2023; that probably tells you all you need to know about my tech trend savviness.

From what little I do know about TikTok, it appears to be an app mostly used by kids to film themselves doing awkward elbow-based dance moves. I think adults mostly use it to share their grandma's terrible lasagna recipes. It's not really clear what the app's actual purpose is meant to be, but one thing that is very clear is that it's owned by a shady arm of the Chinese government who are using it to harvest boatloads of data from its users.

It's this aspect of the app that spooked the federal and provincial governments into banning the use of the app on any government device.

The past few weeks have seen that ban trickle down to Niagara, where the Niagara Region, Niagara Regional Police, and most of the municipalities in Niagara have now also banned TikTok from their work phones.

Thorold even went one step further and blocked the app from being accessed on any of its WiFi networks. The local school boards should probably do the same, but the ensuing riot from teens no longer able to access the latest trends would likely cause more trouble than it's worth.

But seeing the adults get kicked off the TikTok train across Niagara got me thinking: why are we giving these people fancy smartphones with timewasting apps in the first place?

For what purpose does Fort Erie's director of infrastructure need to access Instagram from his work phone? Why does Grimsby's human resources manager need Twitter on her work phone?

They don't. All these silly apps are just time wasters, and these municipal employees and police using them on their work phones are just wasting company time, and since my taxes pay their salaries, they are basically stealing my money so they can scroll through Facebook posts about the 12 best celebrity cameos on "The Simpsons."

Y'know what people need on their work phones?

Three things: email, text messages, voice calls. That's it.

Which is why all of Niagara's municipal employees should have their fancy smartphones taken away and replaced with a trusty flip phone. I found one on Amazon Canada that sells for $85 and does everything any municipal worker could need.

Because it doesn't support apps and doesn't even have a camera, the phone is advertised as being "perfect for kids or seniors," but it also makes it perfect for not wasting taxpayer funded work time writing "Happy Birthday" on your uncle's Facebook timeline.

Not only would this genius plan reclaim untold hours of wasted work time, it would also save millions of dollars on devices. When the Niagara Region banned TikTok, they said it impacted 1,200 phones and tablets. A new phone or tablet costs about $800 these days, so that's a whopping $960,000 worth of devices. Buying 1,200 dumb phones at $85 a pop would have only cost $102,000, so right out the gate we're saving $800,000 before we even get to the other 11 municipalities or the police.

Then, we should take that extra cash and invest in some cooking lessons for these people because from what I've seen on TikTok, all y'alls grandma's lasagna recipes are straight trash.

OPINION

en-ca

2023-03-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-23T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://communitynews.pressreader.com/article/281543705170858

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