BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Earlier this week, Louisiana lawmakers banned the popular social media platform, TikTok from state department-issued phones.
As of Wednesday, December 21, two key state officials announced their pursuit of additional legislation that would further restrict usage of the short-form video hosting service.
A Wednesday afternoon news release from the office of Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin stated that he and Avoyelles Parish/District 28 State Representative Daryl Deshotel are collaborating in efforts to legally ban TikTok from all state-owned devices.
Rep. Deshotel touched on his reason for supporting the ban in a statement, saying, “TikTok is a clear and present danger to our national security and election integrity. TikTok is a Chinese company with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The last thing we need to do is give them access to the data on our state devices. We have seen first-hand that foreign agents will go to any length necessary to gather important intelligence on the United States using social media applications and sophisticated data collection. This is a commonsense piece of legislation.”
Ardoin expressed gratitude for Deshotel’s support with the following words, “I am grateful to be teaming up with Representative Deshotel after his announcement that he would pre-file a bill to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok on state-issued devices. TikTok is a threat to our citizens’ personal data and has no business on any device owned by the State of Louisiana.”
Ardoin added, “Representative Deshotel and I believe we should be doing everything we can to protect our constituents’ personally identifiable information. This bill will help do just that.”
Ardoin and Deshotel’s efforts to pursue such legislation would begin in 2023.