The TikTok app has been officially banned by another large government. The employees who work for New York City have been told to remove the social networking app within 30 days on their city-owned devices for unnamed security reasons.
The Verge reports that NYC Cyber Command claims that TikTok "posed a security threat to the city’s technical networks", according to a spokesperson for New York City Hall. In addition to being ordered to remove the app, employees are barred from using TikTok immediately on city-owned devices, along with accessing the TikTok website from city-owned products.
The spokesperson added:
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.
The official statement did not offer a specific security threat that TikTok posed to NTC workers. However, governments around the world have expressed concerns that the app's parent company ByteDance, could send personal data it collects to its home government of China. ByteDance has repeatedly denied it sends any personal data to the Chinese government.
Nevertheless, this latest TikTok ban follows lots of other governments around the world banning the use of the app on their devices over the past several months. Those efforts include the US federal government, which banned TikTok on all of its devices earlier in 2023.
The state of Montana took things one step further, as it passed a law earlier this year that bans the use of TikTok by any resident in that US state, starting on January 1, 2024. TikTok quickly filed a federal lawsuit against this ban. The company said the law was "an extraordinary and unprecedented measure driven solely by unfounded speculation."
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