TikTok Banned on New York City Government Devices

New York City has prohibited the use of TikTok on all government-issued devices, following a directive by NYC Cyber Command after a security assessment that deemed the app a potential threat due to its ownership by the Chinese company, ByteDance.

The ban follows and mirrors those issued in New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and Georgia, all of which cited similar reasoning for their bans.

This isn’t entirely new news, as the state of New York and the U.S. House of Representatives had previously banned the app on government devices in 2020 — however, it is an elevation of those same bans as it now affects all government-issued devices under both State and City jurisdictions.

The Biden administration has also been applying more pressure on TikTok, urging the platform to disassociate from its Chinese ownership. However, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew isn’t folding over and has emphasized in a congressional testimony that ByteDance operates independently from the Chinese government.

With no concrete evidence being presented that would link TikTok to being a state-run spying tool, it is possible that the judgments simply reflect extreme paranoia and could do more harm than good through polarizing Chinese-associated companies that operate in the States.

Despite there being no evidence, states like Montana want to ban the app entirely by 2024, not just from government-issued devices but from the public as a whole.

While TikTok and its leadership have worked hard to maintain public relations in the U.S. past incidents like the four rogue ByteDance employees caught tracking journalist’s IP addresses have made this an uphill battle for the popular social media app.

In other tech news, Elon Musk’s X App caught slowing down access to competitor sites.