U.S. House of Representatives bans TikTok on its devices

Popular short video platform TikTok has been banned from all the devices owned and managed by the United States House of Representatives.

As reported by Reuters, the lawmakers and staff received a message from the House’s Chief Administrative Officer on Tuesday, telling them to remove the app since it’s considered “high risk due to a number of security issues.”

Anyone who has the app will be urged to remove it, and future downloads will no longer be allowed, the message read.

The news comes days after the federal lawmakers passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that will become law once the U.S. President Joe Biden signs it. The bill also forbids the use of the ByteDance-owned app on all government devices.

Citing concerns that it could be used by the Chinese government to track U.S. citizens, a total of 19 states, including Alabama, Utah, Nebraska, Texas, and Maryland, have already blocked TikTok from being used on government-issued devices.

“With the passage of the Omnibus that banned TikTok on executive branch devices, the CAO worked with the Committee on House Administration to implement a similar policy for the House,” said a spokesperson for the CAO.

Earlier this month, Republican Senator Marco Rubio also introduced bipartisan legislation to ban TikTok nationwide. The same day, 15 state attorneys general led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen sent letters to Google and Apple asking them to ‘’correct’’ the age ratings of the app on their app stores.