You may love TikTok, but the United States government really doesn’t.
The popular social network has been the target of spying accusations by the US government for quite some time due to its Chinese origins. While TikTok was never actually banned from the United States, the government doesn’t seem happy about the app’s existence. The U.S. House of Representatives has now ruled that government devices are not allowed to have TikTok installed.
Per Reuters, the House of Representatives on Tuesday confirmed that TikTok has been banned from U.S. government devices. This restriction means that no one can install and use the platform on government devices.
According to the House’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), TikTok was banned because the platform offers “high risk due to a number of security issues.” The app must be immediately uninstalled from government devices that currently have it installed. Although the ban doesn’t affect regular users, it reignites the discussion about completely banning TikTok from the United States.
Back in 2020, former President Donald Trump announced plans to ban TikTok from the United States, although this never happened. Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission suggested that both Apple and Google should delete TikTok from their app stores. The regulator argued in a letter that TikTok is a “sophisticated surveillance tool” for the Chinese government.
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has confirmed that some of its Chinese-based employees can access data from TikTok users in the U.S. Still ByteDance has stated that these employees are “subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval protocols.” The company has also stated that it is committed to making changes that will “fully safeguard user data and U.S. national security interests.” The company said that it is in the process of finalizing “new advanced data security controls” in partnership with Oracle.
ByteDance migrated its U.S. user data to Oracle servers in November, although the company still uses data centers in both the U.S. and Singapore for backups. Once this agreement is finalized, TIkTok says it will “delete U.S. users’ protected data from our own systems and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S.”
It’s unknown as to whether TikTok will be completely banned from the United States and associated app stores or not.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.