Governor Glenn Youngkin banned TikToK and WeChat on state devices and WiFi on Friday, the same day Attorney General Jason Miyares signed on to a letter asking Google and Apple to change TikTok age ratings to reflect content on the platform.
“TikTok and WeChat data are a channel to the Chinese Communist Party, and their continued presence represents a threat to national security, the intelligence community, and the personal privacy of every single American,” Youngkin said in a press release announcing his executive order. “We are taking this step today to secure state government devices and wireless networks from the threat of infiltration and ensure that we safeguard the data and cybersecurity of state government.”
Miyares signed on to letters to Google’s and Apple’s CEOs from Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen.
The TikTok app is rated 12+ in Apple’s app store, and “T” for teen in Google’s app store.
“In reality, the TikTok app contains frequent and intense alcohol, tobacco, and drug use or references, sexual content, profanity, and mature/suggestive themes. TikTok users can search for hundreds of thousands of hashtags related to these topics, which each return thousands of videos in these categories—instructional videos about drug use, descriptions of drinking games, recipes for cannabis edibles, demonstrations of vaping tricks, pole dancing routines, descriptions of sexual kinks and rape fantasies, and millions of videos set to songs with explicit lyrics, which TikTok makes available to users in its music library,” the letter states.
The letter warns that some states are also considering legal action.
Youngkin is just the latest governor to ban the app on state devices. Nationally, there’s also push to ban TikTok on U.S. government devices, and some agencies have already implemented bans.
In a press release announcing the letter to Apple and Google, Miyares said, “TikTok’s ineffective software’s age-verification features fail to filter content based on age appropriateness ratings. It deceives parents into allowing their children to be potentially exposed to mature content – involving both harmful substances and sexual innuendos – which have real consequences on their development and health.”
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Glenn Youngkin” by Governor of Virginia. Background Photo “TikTok” by Solen Feyissa. CC BY-SA 2.0.
