Ohio and New Jersey have turn out to be the newest U.S. states to ban the use or obtain of TikTok on units owned or offered by the federal government.
The social media large, which turned extremely popular throughout the COVID pandemic, is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance and has been floated as a nationwide safety legal responsibility over its ties to Beijing.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) described the app as high-risk.
“This decisive action will ensure the cybersecurity of the State is unified against actors who may seek to divide us,” Murphy mentioned in a statement Monday.
Murphy just isn’t not solely concentrating on ByteDance as an entire, together with TikTok, but additionally different 13 extra distributors, merchandise and softwares which might be thought-about a menace — together with standard Chinese platform WeChat and Chinese telecommunications conglomerate Huawei Technologies.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine mentioned his state staff and companies usually are not allowed to make use of any social media app, channel or platform owned by an entity based mostly in China. The Republican governor accused Chinese-owned firms of instantly sharing customers’ knowledge with the Chinese Communist Party beneath the nation’s 2017 National Security Law, which requires native firms to share intelligence with the CCP.
“Social media applications and platforms operating in China engage in surreptitious data privacy and cybersecurity practices to include collecting personal information, behavioral use data, biometric data, and other data contained on the devices of its users,” DeWine mentioned in his executive order signed Sunday.
TikTok spokesperson Jamal Brown mentioned “it is unfortunate” that states enacting these bans will miss out on the advantages of TikTok round constructing group and sharing data.
“We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies that will do nothing to advance cybersecurity in their states and are based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok,” Brown advised HuffPost.
Other states which have issued related bans of TikTok for state staff embody Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, amongst others.
“We are continuing to work with the federal government to finalize a solution that will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at the federal and state level,” Brown added.
Late final month, Congress handed a spending invoice which included a provision banning TikTok from federal government-owned devices with some exceptions.
FBI Director Chris Wray has additionally shared his issues in regards to the standard app prior to now, telling an occasion on the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy in December that China is successfully accountable for the algorithm, “which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.”
