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Gov. Greg Abbott prohibited the use of TikTok on any government-issued devices on Wednesday, per a press release issued by the Office of the Texas Governor.
Abbott, a Republican, said in the release his ban is in response to a purported increasing threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to critical U.S. information and infrastructure.
The governor wrote in letters to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Texas House Speaker Rep. Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont) and state agency heads explaining the importance of maintaining Texans’ cybersecurity.
He asserted that “vast amounts of data” collected by the popular short-form video hosting service is offered to the Chinese government.
“While TikTok has claimed that it stores U.S. data within the U.S., the company admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based employees can have access to U.S. data,” Abbott said in the release. “It has also been reported that ByteDance planned to use TikTok location information to surveil individual American citizens.”
According to the release, the U.S. is home to more than 85 million TikTok users.
Abbott directed agency and department leaders to ban anyone in their employ from downloading or using TikTok on state-owned cell phones, laptops, tablets, desktop computers and other devices that can access the Internet, the release said.
Each entity’s information technology (IT) department will be enforcing the governor’s order.
Austin NBC affiliate KXAN reported that Texas joins Maryland and South Dakota in preventing state government employees’ use of TikTok.
ABC News reported that the State of Indiana became the first in the U.S. to sue TikTok for allegedly misleading users about China’s capability to access their data.
The platform issued a statement insisting it prioritizes “safety, privacy and security.”
According to ABC News, the Trump administration attempted to ban TikTok in 2020 but then requested ByteDance to sell the app to an American company to no avail.