DeWine’s executive order, announced shortly after the Greene County Republican was sworn in to his second term as governor, comes after President Joe Biden banned TikTok, a popular social-media video platform, on phones and other devices owned by the federal government.
In his order, DeWine noted that Chinese businesses are required to share data with the Chinese Communist Party, and that apps like TikTok are known to act as “an intelligence-gathering mechanism” by gathering sensitive personal and business information from users.
“These surreptitious data privacy and cybersecurity practices pose national and local security and cybersecurity threats to users of these applications and platforms and the devices storing the applications and platforms,” DeWine stated in the order.
The executive order will be in force until 10 days after DeWine leaves the governor’s office. The order does not affect the ability of Ohioans to use TikTok on phones or other devices not owned by the state of Ohio.
Besides TikTok, the executive order also bans a number of other Chinese-owned apps from being used on state-owned devices, including: Tencent QQ, Tencent Video, QQ International (QQi), Qzone, WeChat, Weibo, Xiao HongShu, Zhihu, Meituan, Toutiao, Alipay, Xiami Music, Tiantian Music, DingTalkfDing Ding, Douban, RenRen, Youku/ Tudou, Little Red Book, and Zhihu.
Similar orders have been issued recently by governors in a number of other states, including Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, New Hampshire, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.
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