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TikTok News — People Are Getting Their News from Social Media

Then there are states banning TikTok from government devices.

If you want to be where the people are, then you need to be on social media. What happens when state governments ban you from being on popular platforms — or should I say platform, as in TikTok?

First this:

Here are the key findings from research by BanklessTimes:

  • The number of people regularly using TikTok for news has risen from 14 million U.S. users in 2020 to an estimated 31 million in 2022.
  • TikTok is not alone — 31 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook regularly for news.
  • The number of those that use Facebook as a news source dropped from 54 percent in 2020 to just 44 percent in 2022.
  • In comparison, the number of those using TikTok as a news source grew from 22 percent to 33 percent.
  • The increase in use of TikTok as a news source may be attributed to Gen Z placing the most trust in influencers and creators.

Here is the full article for your perusal.

Then there is this from the Washington Post:

“The bans keep coming.

“Over a five-week stretch, nearly two dozen state governors and officials have imposed government restrictions of TikTok in their states. Most are Republicans, but a few Democrats are joining them.

“The bans range from prohibiting the device on government internet networks to restricting state employees from using or downloading the app on state devices.

“Now, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers plans to ban the app. He would be at least the second Democratic governor to ban the app on state devices, after Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly announced a ban late last month. It’s not clear what Evers’s ban will look like; his office did not respond to a request for comment.

“The office of another Democrat, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, also announced this week that state officials banned the app.”

The issue is that TikTok is seen as an arm of the Chinese government, but then what aspect of commercial enterprise in China is not an “arm of the Chinese government?” I’m not saying that we fling the doors wide, but some people in government need to be able to monitor TikTok and maybe even use it to get our messages out to the population that is using the social media platform. Part of rumor control is knowing what the rumors are — how do you do that when you are not allowed on the social media platform?
Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.