A TikTok ban for Miami-Dade? Proposal targets popular app from China as security risk

Douglas Hanks
·1 min read
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Miami-Dade County could join the list of governments banning TikTok, the popular social media app owned by a Chinese company.

Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins proposed legislation to ban the app from county-issued phones, citing “security risks at the national, state and local levels.”

Her resolution directs Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to ban TikTok and develop a plan to delete the app from county devices. The legislation is scheduled for a hearing at the commission’s Infrastructure, Operations and Innovations Committee on Feb. 14.

If the TikTok ban gets enacted, county employees could still use the app in Miami-Dade buildings on personal phones. But watching TikTok videos like the making of a chocolate giraffe, a chipmunk gobbling nuts, and a song about corn on the cob — all examples from the app’s greatest hits in 2022 — would be prohibited on county devices.

Miami-Dade would be joining a number of governments banning the app, a trend fueled by warnings the Chinese government could use the platform by the Chinese company ByteDance to gather data on Americans. A ban on federal government phones recently passed Congress as part of a spending bill signed by President Joe Biden.

TikTok has called the bans part of a “political bandwagon” that isn’t based on legitimate security concerns.