Orange County government employees can forget about scrolling through TikTok on the job. The Board of Supervisors is following advice from the federal government to ban TikTok from county-owned equipment.
The board approved a proposal from First District Supervisor Andrew Do and Sheriff Don Barnes to ban the popular social media app to “ensure the safety and security of county data.”
“We are taking proactive steps to ensure the county of Orange is following best security practices to protect our county and the residents we serve,” Do said in a statement.
KC Roestenberg, the county’s chief information officer, said applications like TikTok can pose a risk to county systems and data.
“Social media plays an important role in the county’s ability to communicate and perform community outreach,” Roestenberg said in a statement. “As such, it is critical that the social media platforms we use are trusted and comply with a reasonable level of regulation.”
Concerns have been raised over how much access the China-based tech giant ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, has to user’s information and whether the app could harvest user data and tweak algorithms to manipulate its news feed and content. The short-form video app has been under fire amid a global rivalry between China, the U.S. and its Western allies.
The county is following several government entities including the United States, Belgium and Canada that have banned the use of TikTok on government devices. TikTok officials have said in news reports those decisions are “based on basic misinformation” about the company, which is willing to meet with government officials to address security concerns and “set the record straight on misconceptions.”
Last December, the House of Representatives had its staff to delete TikTok from any government-issued devices. On March 7, the White House backed legislation called the RESTRICT Act that would give the government the ability to ban foreign…
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