South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem Issues Tik Tok Ban

State of South Dakota employees and others who contract with the state will no longer be able to access one of the most popular social media platforms.

Tuesday (November 29), Governor Kristi Noem signed Executive Order 2022-10, which bans access to the Chinese social media platform TikTok for state government agencies, employees, and contractors using state devices.

The order prohibits downloading or using the TikTok application or visiting the website on state-owned or state-leased electronic devices capable of internet connectivity and takes effect immediately.

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It applies to employees and agencies of the State of South Dakota, including anyone who contracts with the state, commissions, and authorities.

Noem says the order is in response to what she calls a 'growing national security threat posed by TikTok due to its data-gathering operations on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).'

In a press release announcing the action, Noem said:

'South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence-gathering operations of nations who hate us. The Chinese Communist Party uses information that it gathers on TikTok to manipulate the American people, and they gather data off the devices that access the platform.'

Noem is calling on other Governors around the nation to enact a similar ban in their states.

According to Wikipedia, TikTok, which launched internationally in 2017, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance and hosts a variety of user-submitted videos with durations from 15 seconds to ten minutes.

The site had been downloaded 2 billion times by October 2020 and in 2021 was ranked by Cloudflare as the most popular website in the world, surpassing Google.

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Source: South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem Issues Tik Tok Ban

Filed Under: Social Media, Technology, Government, Governor Kristi Noem

Categories: Articles, News, South Dakota