The app was banned from government devices in 2022.
Trump administration officials are now free to post and endlessly scroll TikTok, a new memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) says. The memo is the latest move from the federal government formally undoing a 2022 law that banned the app from most government-issued devices,
The OMB memo cites an earlier opinion from the Justice Department. The DoJ said the 2022 law no longer applies because the current version of TikTok has American owners and relies on a different recommendation algorithm than the app that operated under ByteDance. “TikTok may be used on government devices,” the OMB memo confirms.
The memo ends what’s among the last vestiges of the TikTok bans. The app was banned from most federal government devices in 2022 amid rising concerns about its parent company’s ties to China. Government officials under then-President Joe Biden, including FBI Director Chris Wray, said the app posed a national security threat, though the exact nature of the risk was the subject of intense debate.
Intelligence officials never publicly disclosed specifics about the threat posed by TikTok, but lawmakers cited the app’s data collection practices, and raised questions about whether the app’s recommendation algorithm could be subject to influence from the Chinese government.
The app briefly went dark in the US last year after President Biden passed a law requiring ByteDance to sell the app to American owners or face a ban. The app came back online as Trump took office, and a deal to spin off the US version of the app was finalized earlier this year. The US version of the app is now controlled by an entity called TikTok USDS Joint Venture, which is controlled by a group of investors that includes Oracle, Silver Lake and others. ByteDance maintains a 19.9 percent stake in the company.
Some federal agencies have already begun posting on TikTok from official accounts. The Department of Transportation, Treasury Department and Health and Human Services all started new accounts last month after the Justice Department opinion. The White House opened an official account last year.