What’s Next for TikTok in the U.S.: A Look at the State and Federal Policy Landscape

ALEC's Jake Morabito published his latest article discussing the prospective future of Tik Tok and the policy action being taken by both federal and state lawmakers.

TikTok, the popular social media app owned by Chinese mega conglomerate ByteDance, is increasingly impossible to escape in the American zeitgeist. The app is on a meteoric rise in the United States, consistently topping the charts across U.S. app stores and currently boasting over 150 million monthly active American users, up from 100 million in 2020.

Unlike U.S.-based social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn, which are subject to U.S. law and the U.S. judicial system, TikTok’s foreign ownership and possible entanglements with Chinese government intelligence agencies and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) present unique challenges for American lawmakers.

Many U.S. officials are concerned about TikTok’s potential threat to national security. Policymakers have proposed many different solutions, from granting the Biden Administration new authority to ban TikTok and similar apps on national security grounds, to forcing a sale or divestiture of the company (which now seems to be a less viable solution), to prohibiting government agencies from using TikTok on government-issued devices and networks.

Meanwhile, at the state level, many governors, state agency heads, and state legislators are taking matters into their own hands by restricting TikTok—and in some cases, additional apps and technology vendors—from state-owned devices and state networks.

Employers – whether government or private – are free to determine whether their employees are allowed to use an app on company or government devices and networks. Restrictions might be justified based on privacy, security, or just to avoid having employees using company assets for private purposes. And that’s precisely what many state governments have done.

The following is a list of states that have taken steps to restrict TikTok in some form. Some governors opted to enact formal executive orders, while others utilized existing authority to direct agencies to implement TikTok bans across government agencies. Some state legislatures have even enacted new laws combatting TikTok or have legislation pending this session to that effect.

Link to article:
https://alec.org/article/whats-next-for-tiktok-in-the-u-s-a-look-at-the-state-and-federal-policy-landscape/