More than half of the country has issued a ban on the popular short film app, Tiktok, due to concerns about its user data and the potential for information to get back to the Chinese Government. Many different governors take their stance on the ban with the enforcement of a partial or full ban on government devices.

   According to CNN, “Many of the states have singled out TikTok for executive action, with governors prohibiting the social media platform from government networks and devices,” Brian Fung said. “But some have gone further — adding other apps with links to China to their ban lists, including WeChat and AliPay.” 

    31 states have taken the initiative to restrict the usage of Tiktok on state-issued devices. Amidst the ban, Tiktok offered to even increase its transparency with a grant for U.S. government officials to have oversight of its algorithms in an effort to prove their security.

   According to FOX News, “The company announced the creation of a new trust and safety team within its U.S. Data Security operation,” Breck Dumas said. “TikTok also announced last summer that it was rerouting all U.S. user traffic to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, saying it would still use its U.S. and Singapore data centers for backup, but as we continue our work we expect to delete U.S. users’ private data from our own data centers and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S.”