Texas Governor Greg Abbott Announces Statewide Plan Banning TikTok On Government Employees’ State-Issued And Personal Devices

TikTok
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Now what are Texas government employees supposed to scroll while they’re sitting on the toilet?

I’m kind of embarrassed to admit how much enjoyment I get out of TikTok. Is it a stupid app filled with people doing stupid things to try to get famous? Sure. Is it a bunch of cringeworthy wannabe-country singers trying to find an easy way to make it big? Sure.

But is it a great way to kill time when you’re bored?

Hell yes.

Obviously there have been concerns about the app’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party, due to TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and its sharing of information with the Chinese government.

In 2020, President Donald Trump began taking action to ban TikTok in the United States over these security and surveillance concerns, though a federal court granted an injunction preventing the ban and the plan was ultimately abandoned after Joe Biden took office, at least for now.

Despite the app’s claims that TikTok’s US arm doesn’t share data with the Chinese government, and that all US traffic is routed through American company Oracle Cloud while all US user data would be deleted, FBI Director Christopher Wray also issued warnings about the app in late 2022, saying that control of TikTok is in the hands of a Chinese government that “doesn’t share our values.”

Just last month, the US government passed a spending bill that included a provision banning TikTok from all federal government devices.

And now, Texas is taking it a step further for their employees.

Lone Star State governor Greg Abbott announced a plan today that will require all state agencies to ban the use of TikTok on both government-owned devices and personal cell phones used to conduct government business.

The plan would also require agencies to “identify sensitive locations, meetings, or personnel within an agency” and ban devices with TikTok from these areas, as well as prevent the use of TikTok on any government agency network.

In announcing the ban, Abbott said:

“The security risks associated with the use of TikTok on devices used to conduct the important business of our state must not be underestimated or ignored.

Owned by a Chinese company that employs Chinese Communist Party members, TikTok harvests significant amounts of data from a user’s device, including details about a user’s internet activity.”

It’s clearly the most aggressive action taken yet against the app, one that has an estimated 80 million monthly users in the United States alone.

And whether you agree with the ban or not, there’s no questioning that bans on the app would have a huge impact on millions of content creators who make serious money and use the platform to boost their personal and professional profiles.

On the flipside, it would also mean that we wouldn’t have to hear from all of these wannabe country singers who get signed to record deals just from posting shitty videos on TikTok…

So maybe it’s worth it to ban the app after all.

If it means no more cringey shit like this, I’m all for it.

@the615house Musical beer pong gets intense 😳 @Taylor Austin Dye @Brooke Lynn @Haley Mae Campbell ♬ original sound – The 615 House

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