New York City is joining dozens of states and the federal government in banning TikTok from city-owned devices. Agencies will have to remove the app within the next 30 days but the ban goes into effect immediately.
A New York City Hall spokesperson said in a statement:
While social media is great at connecting New Yorkers with one another and the city, we have to ensure we are always using these platforms in a secure manner. NYC Cyber Command regularly explores and advances proactive measures to keep New Yorkers’ data safe.
In an NYC Cyber Command review, a city official found that TikTok “posed a security threat to the city’s technical networks,” and, in response, banned city employees from downloading or using the app on city-owned devices.
This comes as TikTok faces increasing limits and bans in the U.S. and globally. The application has been prohibited on devices owned by the federal government, numerous universities have enforced bans on TikTok across their institutional networks and devices, and the app has been subjected to bans in numerous countries around the world.
The wave of bans comes after TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, participated in some unsettling high-tech surveillance of journalists. They’re also a response to TikTok’s ability to share data with the Chinese government.
Experts don’t all agree on the depth of the Chinese government’s involvement, but the app is certainly threatening America’s dominance over tech, and some lawmakers believe that TikTok is being used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on Americans.
It begs a lot of questions but, for me, this specific NYC ban makes me curious: How many people in non-social media marketing roles are actually downloading TikTok on their work phones? Seems like a weird thing to do!
