New York Metropolis on Wednesday joined a wave of states and federal businesses in banning TikTok from government-owned gadgets primarily based on safety issues, snuffing out some common city-run TikTok accounts within the course of.
Jonah Allon, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams, mentioned in an announcement that town’s Cyber Command decided that the app “posed a safety menace to town’s technical networks.” Metropolis businesses should take away the app inside 30 days and staff will lose entry to TikTok and its web site from city-owned gadgets and networks.
The TikTok accounts of Mr. Adams, town’s Division of Sanitation and the Division of Parks and Recreation all up to date their bios with this message: “This account was operated by NYC till August 2023. It’s not monitored.”
Quite a few authorities officers have been limiting entry to TikTok in response to issues that the app, which is owned by the Chinese language firm ByteDance, may give Beijing entry to delicate consumer knowledge. New York State has banned TikTok on state-issued cell gadgets for greater than three years, with some exceptions.
The bans have largely been restricted to official gadgets, although Montana lately handed a invoice barring TikTok throughout the state. That rule, which is ready to take impact on Jan. 1, is being challenged by TikTok on a number of grounds, together with accusations that it violates the First Modification.
TikTok declined to touch upon the ban, which was earlier reported by The Verge.
The town’s Division of Sanitation has grow to be an surprising TikTok darling, amassing almost 50,000 followers with movies highlighting its staff and memes tied to new trash-collection occasions. New York journal’s Curbed website praised the account final 12 months, saying that the division “comes throughout in its TikToks as a bunch of real, hardworking salt-of-the-earth of us.” The account received one other enhance final 12 months when a declaration from Jessica Tisch, town’s sanitation commissioner, went viral on TikTok: “The rats are completely going to hate this announcement. However the rats don’t run this metropolis, we do.”
Whereas some TikTok viewers might grieve the lack of such accounts, they will nonetheless watch Empire State-related fare on @NYGov, the official TikTok account for New York State, which lately riffed off the current “woman dinner” pattern with a video extolling a “New York State woman dinner” of pizza, Hudson Valley cheese, Tate’s cookies and bagels.
Michael Gold contributed reporting.