Is that this the start of a brand new wave of motion towards TikTok?
Right this moment, 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 evaluate by NYC Cyber Command, which discovered that TikTok poses a safety menace 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, we have now to make sure we’re all the time utilizing these platforms in a safe method. NYC Cyber Command usually explores and advances proactive measures to maintain New Yorkers’ information secure.”
It’s one other crimson flag for TikTok, which continues to fail official cybersecurity checks, which may finally see it banned outright for all customers within the US.
The state of New York was truly the first US state to ban the use of TikTok on government devices, with its preliminary guidelines towards 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 solely.
Again in Could, Montana announced that it will be banning TikTok for all customers within the area from early subsequent 12 months. 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 Overseas Affairs Committee gave President Joe Biden the facility to ban the Chinese-owned app, if he deemed such a transfer crucial, amid ongoing safety discussions round its potential connection to the CCP.
Since then, nevertheless, the TikTok ban chatter has quietened down, as tensions between the US and China simmer, and the Committee on Overseas Funding in the US (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. But it surely 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 underneath the highlight, and put extra strain on CFIUS to make an announcement?
As I’ve famous beforehand, it looks like TikTok is a world incident away from a US ban. Speak of a TikTok ban ramped up considerably earlier this 12 months, 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 stress that places extra concentrate on the app, and it looks like one other conflict between the 2 governments might be the ultimate straw for the app.
However TikTok remains to be engaged on its alternative solution to appease US regulators, and perhaps, even when a ban is enacted, TikTok may have another choice to stay energetic, and preserve feeding customers their every day dose of short-form video clips.
In different phrases, I don’t count on a TikTok ban to come up right away. However the NYC ban is a reminder that such might be enacted, anytime.
