19 states choke TikTok on gov’t devices; feds push for nationwide restrictions

In the past two weeks, United States lawmakers have increasingly restricted access to China-owned TikTok on government-managed devices. TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the world. Most recently, state agencies in Louisiana and West Virginia yesterday implemented new bans to prevent TikTok from tracking government employees or censoring their content. According to Reuters, that brings the total up to 19 out of 50 US states that have “at least partially blocked access on government computers to TikTok.”

It seems that states are taking what actions they can to protect US data, as, for months, President Joe Biden has seemingly dragged his feet after reportedly coming close to completing a deal with TikTok that would prevent a nationwide ban from wrenching the popular app out of the hands of 100 million Americans. Now news outlets report that it’s unlikely that Biden will seal that deal before the year ends. The New York Times reported that the deal’s terms are “unlikely to satisfy anyone.”

While Biden ponders his potential agreement, Congress seems just as ready as states to move more aggressively against TikTok. Just today, Congress introduced a new spending proposal that included a plan to restrict TikTok access for all federal employees on all government devices. Last week, the Senate voted to approve a similar ban restricting all federal employee access to the app. Reuters reported that this week, the US House of Representatives would have to approve that bill before passing it on to Biden. Even more aggressively, last week, Congress also introduced bipartisan legislation that went even further, seeking to ban TikTok for all users nationwide, citing national security concerns.

TikTok has repeatedly issued statements to Ars, saying that all these state and potential federal bans “will do nothing to advance the national security of the United States.”

If the federal ban restricting TikTok on government devices passes in the House, Reuters reported that the White House Office of Management and Budget would have 60 days to develop standards and guidelines for federal employees impacted by the ban.

Where is TikTok already blocked?

In the US, TikTok access is already restricted by some federal agencies, including all US military, the White House, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department.

Louisiana and West Virginia join other states imposing at least some restrictions on TikTok access on state devices, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Most of these states announced new restrictions within the past few weeks, indicating mounting pressure to widely restrict TikTok in the US.

TikTok’s rising tensions in the US

The New York Times published a detailed history of rising tensions leading to TikTok’s increasingly controversial status in the US, declaring, “No Chinese company has ever conquered American society like TikTok.”

According to the Times, TikTok’s path to becoming a top security concern for the US started once China President Xi Jinping took power in 2013. Immediately, Xi set out to crack down on all tech companies operating in China, passing the Cybersecurity Law and National Intelligence Law, which required companies to assist the Chinese government in intelligence-gathering. Then, in 2021, China passed two more laws requiring Chinese tech companies to turn over any data requested. Some US lawmakers today cannot see how TikTok could alleviate concerns over Chinese government access to American user data so long as those laws are still being enforced in China.

During this pivotal political period in China, many in the US—which politically has long considered China among its greatest foreign adversaries—at first considered TikTok’s rise as non-threatening. It was viewed as likely a fad that could die out as fast as MySpace, the Times reported. In 2018, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snap even welcomed TikTok’s exorbitant investment in advertising dollars into their own platforms, taking the money with glee and not recognizing TikTok as a looming social media rival. Meanwhile, with each user wooed by TikTok’s ads on rival platforms, TikTok was learning more about what American users like, feeding its algorithm, and preparing to rapidly take over the social media world.

In less than a year, social media companies realized that they underestimated TikTok, but by then, it was too late. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the Times reported that TikTok “gained 110 million daily average users between March and April alone”—“eclipsing even Zoom” in total downloads.

It was during the pandemic that TikTok became much more politicized in the US, the Times reported, with Facebook lobbying US lawmakers to oppose the app and ByteDance hiring its own lobbyists to counter Facebook’s political attacks.

By mid-July 2020, then-President Donald Trump became the greatest threat to TikTok in the US, with Trump sounding a warning that TikTok could be spying on Americans or suppressing American speech. That led to Trump’s executive order banning TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) recommending a divestment that resulted in US company Oracle overseeing TikTok data on Americans—critically, storing that data in the US.