New Jersey, Ohio Latest States to Ban TikTok on Government Devices

In October, TikTok vehemently denied a US report claiming that its parent company ByteDance planned to track American citizens via the app.

New Jersey and Ohio have joined a whole array of other US states in banning the use of Chinese video hosting service TikTok on government-owned devices.

The office of the Garden State’s Democratic Governor Phil Murphy said in a statement that “there have been national security concerns about user data the Chinese government might require ByteDance [the owner of TikTok] to provide.”

Ohio's GOP Governor Mike DeWine, for his part, argued in his order that “these surreptitious data privacy and cybersecurity practices pose national and local security and cybersecurity threats to users of these applications and platforms and the devices storing the applications and platforms.”

Chinese short-video app officials responded by saying that they had been “disappointed that so many [US] 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.”

This followed Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers saying last week that he plans to announce a ban on the use of TikTok on state phones, joining the growing number of states that have already prohibited the Chinese social media app.

Pennsylvania, Kansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Montana, Virginia, Georgia, New Hampshire, Idaho, North Dakota, Iowa, Alabama, Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Florida previously banned TikTok from state-owned electronic devices due to national security concerns.

Also last week, GOP Rep Mike Gallagher, the incoming chairman of the new House Select Committee on China, slammed TikTok as "digital fentanyl" that he claimed China's government is providing to Americans.

The allegations come after the House Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) said in an internal notice last month that the lower chamber’s staff “are not allowed to download the TikTok app on any House mobile devices” due to security concerns.

The $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, passed by Congress earlier in December, specifically requires federal government agencies to remove TikTok from their network of official devices, even though some bodies have already imposed their own bans.

Last fall, the platform rejected allegations by a US media outlet that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance planned to monitor US citizens via the app.

The platform, in particular, insisted that it “does not collect precise GPS location information from US users, meaning TikTok could not monitor US users in the way the [outlet’s] article suggested.”

According to the company, “TikTok has never been used to 'target' any members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists, nor do we serve them a different content experience than other users.”