President Biden signed a law banning nearly 4 million federal employees from having TikTok on their government phones, over national security concerns. This week, New Jersey and Ohio joined at least 20 other states in restricting access to TikTok, amid fears that the Chinese government could use the app to spy on Americans.
Will California jump on the TikTok ban bandwagon?
While the state often leads on the policy frontier, not so much on regulating social media companies, many of which make their home in California.
It’s a live issue in the Legislature now that bills were introduced Wednesday to ban TikTok and other “high-risk” apps on state-issued cell phones and devices. State Sen. Bill Dodd, a Napa Democrat who authored one of the bills, said he wants to prevent cybersecurity threats—of which there have been a few recently.
Dodd’s Senate Bill 74 is still in its early phases, but if passed, it would apply to apps owned or controlled by a “country of concern” — a list that would be maintained by the governor’s office. TikTok, the short-form video hosting platform, is owned by ByteDance, in which the Chinese government owns a stake.
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