• Virginia and Georgia have banned TikTok and WeChat from being used on their state-owned phones and networks.
• Virginia governor says that the apps are a threat to national security.
• The governor of Texas has banned TikTok from his state-owned buildings and government buildings.

Since the FBI director said that TikTok is a threat to national security, the federal government was already keeping a close eye on the social media app. Since then, the governors of Georgia and Virginia have taken the business to court.

On Friday, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an order that said WeChat and TikTok couldn’t be used on state-owned cell phones and networks.

In a press release, Youngkin said, “TikTok and WeChat data are a line to the Chinese Communist Party, and their continued presence is a threat to national security, the intelligence community, and the privacy of every single American.”

“We are taking this action today to protect state government data and wireless networks from the risk of intrusion and to make sure we keep state government cybersecurity.”

Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia banned TikTok from being used on state-owned devices on Thursday.

TikTok said that it was unhappy with how some state and federal officials were acting. In an email, a company rep said that the company is ready to use solutions that were made with the help of national security groups “to further secure our platform here in the United States.”

Indiana’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, filed two lawsuits against TikTok at the beginning of December.

The first says that the platform “lured kids” into the app’s content by using swear words, sexual references, and other inappropriate language.

In the second case, the state says that the Beijing-based company ByteDance, which runs the app TikTok, has sensitive and personal information about Indiana residents and makes them think that their data is safe from the Chinese government.

Attorney General Rokita called the TikTok app “a malicious and menacing threat unleashed on unsuspecting Indiana consumers by a Chinese company that knows full well the harms it causes to users.”

With these two lawsuits, the lawyer said, they wanted to stop TikTok’s illegal, false, fraudulent, and misleading practises that break Indiana law.

TikTok says that the safety and privacy of the community are its top priorities.

In an email, a TikTok representative said, “We make sure that the well-being of youth is part of our policies. We limit features based on age, give parents tools and resources, and continue to invest in new ways to view content that is age-appropriate or family-friendly.”

The spokesperson also said that they have already made a lot of progress toward putting these ideas into action and are confident that they are on the right track to negotiate with the US government to fully address any legitimate US national security concerns.

Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, also took action against TikTok in the first few days of December. He asked state agencies to stop their employees from downloading or using the app on phones, tablets, and laptops. Then, he told the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Information Resources to come up with a plan to deal with the dangers that come with using TikTok.

He also sent a letter to the leaders of the Texas Legislature, asking them to make changes to cybersecurity at the next session, which will be held in 2019.

“TikTok collects a lot of information from the devices of its users, such as when, where, and how they use the internet, and gives this treasure trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,”

A representative for TikTok said that false information about the company is “the main reason” why the app is being banned.

The Trump administration banned TikTok from many government-owned phones and the military in 2020. Since then, this ban has been upheld by the Biden administration. In 2020, the CIA said that the Chinese government might be able to get user information, but there was no proof that this was happening.

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