TikTok ban wave – France joins the list of countries

03.04.2023.

Foto: Shutterstock

France, the Netherlands and Norway have joined a growing list of countries to issue orders banning the use of TikTok on government devices, amid rising concerns over the app’s privacy and security.

France is introducing a ban on the “recreational” use of the social network TikTok and other popular apps on the mobile devices of public officials due to inadequate security and data protection, authorities in Paris announced on Friday.

The ban will take effect immediately, the Ministry of Public Sector Transformation and the Civil Service wrote on Twitter, which, along with Instagram and the streaming platform Netflix, is also affected by the ban.

Pour garantir la cybersécurité de nos administrations et de nos agents publics, le @gouvernementFR a décidé d’interdire les applications récréatives comme TikTok, sur les téléphones professionnels des fonctionnaires d’État. @jnbarrot pic.twitter.com/avxtpKZ6uu
— Stanislas Guerini (@StanGuerini) March 24, 2023

France is the latest in a string of governments and institutions to take such steps against TikTok due to alleged security risks. This includes:

the White House
the UK parliament
the Dutch and Belgian administrations
the New Zealand parliament
the governments of Canada, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Jordan
the EU’s two biggest policy-making institutions: the European Commission and the European Council.

In fact, US authorities are considering a whole ban on TikTok, citing concerns that Chinese intelligence services could use it to collect data and influence users. TikTok rejects these allegations.

The app – owned by the Chinese company ByteDance – currently has more than one billion users worldwide.

ban