Is that this the start of a brand new wave of motion in opposition to TikTok?
At present, the Metropolis of New York has announced that TikTok is now banned on all city-owned gadgets, increasing on different federal and state bans of the app on government-owned instruments.
The ban comes after a assessment by NYC Cyber Command, which discovered that TikTok poses a safety risk to the town’s technical networks.
As per NYC Cyber Command (by way of The Verge):
“Whereas social media is nice at connecting New Yorkers with each other and the town, now we have to make sure we’re all the time utilizing these platforms in a safe method. NYC Cyber Command repeatedly explores and advances proactive measures to maintain New Yorkers’ knowledge protected.”
It’s one other purple flag for TikTok, which continues to fail official cybersecurity checks, which may ultimately see it banned outright for all customers within the US.
The state of New York was really the first US state to ban the use of TikTok on government devices, with its preliminary guidelines in opposition to the app introduced again in 2020. Since then, many US states and counties have adopted swimsuit, although just one has gone as far as to outlaw the app totally.
Again in Could, Montana announced that it will be banning TikTok for all customers within the area from early subsequent yr. That ruling is now being challenged in court by TikTok and its users, who’ve argued that the ban violates their respective first modification rights.
The US Authorities, in the meantime, continues to weigh a doable TikTok ban. Again in March, the US Home International Affairs Committee gave President Joe Biden the facility to ban the Chinese-owned app, if he deemed such a transfer obligatory, amid ongoing safety discussions round its potential connection to the CCP.
Since then, nonetheless, the TikTok ban chatter has quietened down, as tensions between the US and China simmer, and the Committee on International Funding in the USA (CFIUS) continues to weigh its ruling on the app. CFIUS has been reviewing the app for almost three years, and it’s unclear why it’s taking so lengthy to make an official announcement on its stance. However it may nonetheless see TikTok banned, at just about any second, regardless of the app seemingly falling out of focus for lawmakers in current months.
Will the NYC ban put it again beneath the highlight, and put extra stress on CFIUS to make an announcement?
As I’ve famous beforehand, it appears like TikTok is a global incident away from a US ban. Discuss of a TikTok ban ramped up considerably earlier this yr, after the US ordered a Chinese balloon in US air space to be shot down, amid issues that it was getting used to spy on the US and Canada. That’s the kind of pressure that places extra give attention to the app, and it looks as if one other conflict between the 2 governments might be the ultimate straw for the app.
However TikTok continues to be engaged on its alternative solution to appease US regulators, and possibly, even when a ban is enacted, TikTok could have another choice to stay energetic, and preserve feeding customers their each day dose of short-form video clips.
In different phrases, I don’t count on a TikTok ban to come up immediately. However the NYC ban is a reminder that such might be enacted, anytime.
