Four States Now Ban CCP-Tied TikTok on State Devices

Texas is now the fourth state to ban Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-tied app TikTok for state devices, joining South Dakota, South Carolina, and Maryland.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) tweeted Dec. 7, “I’ve banned TikTok on state issued devices. I’m also calling for legislation to make the ban permanent and to broaden the ban. As I detail in my letter and press release, the threat posed by the CCP through TikTok is serious and must be stopped.”

In his letter to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, Abbott explained further:

”TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices—including when, where, and how they conduct internet activity—and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government…Further, under China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, all businesses are required to assist China in intelligence work, including data sharing, and TikTok’s algorithm has already censored topics politically sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party, including the Tiananmen Square protests.

The director of the FBI recently warned that the Chinese government can control TikTok’s content algorithm, allowing it to perpetrate influence operations within the United States. In fact, the use of TikTok on federal-government devices is already prohibited by agencies like the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security.”

Abbott even said he gave the Texas Department of Information Resources and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) a deadline of January 15, 2023, “to develop a model plan that state agencies can deploy with respect to the use of TikTok on personal devices.”

Related: Biden Must Be Called Out for Unbanning TikTok

Revelations earlier this year exposed how Chinese employees at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, could access U.S. TikTok user data. The CCP owns a financial stake and a board seat in ByteDance.  Recent evidence showed that CCP-tied TikTok accounts mostly bashed Republicans and pushed Democrats before the 2022 election, arguably foreign election interference.

South Dakota, Maryland, South Carolina, and Texas all took action to ban TikTok for state agencies, according to Fox News.