Rising tensions between China and the United States are finding new battlegrounds in social networks. More precisely, in its use. For this reason, TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company DanceByte, suspected by some governments around the use of user data and its supposed independence from the Chinese government.

The last country to take action on this issue is Francewho announced that he would ban TikTok from public officials’ office phones with the aim of “ensuring administrative cybersecurity,” the Minister for Civil Services, Stanislas Guerini, reported on his Twitter account.

according to the newspapers World, the ban will extend to other recreational apps, regardless of country of origin. Among them, Netflix, Twitter, and CandyCrush are listed.

In any case, Guerini pointed out that after the full list of applications blocked on computers was officially published, exceptions will be included “for the sake of communication”.

TikTok ban

Among the most recent countries to have banned their officials from TikTok are UK, Netherlands, Belgium and New Zealand. For his part, Sweden did the same with members of the armed forces.

Besides that, In Asia, it added India which banned it in 2020, Afghanistan which did it last September, and Taiwan., in December. Institutions such as the Commission and the Council of the European Union also joined. However, it was the United States and Canada that took firmer action.

The Canadian government reported that use of these platforms would be prohibited on all authorized mobile devices, while the US, which passed a similar law in December, announced in early March that Public agencies have 30 days to remove the social network from federal devices and systems.

Washington went further. The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted a few weeks ago to promote legislation that would facilitate the banning of TikTok across the United States, which forced the social network’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, to testify before North American legislators.