Nearly three years ago, New York City joined governments across the country in banning TikTok from its phones because of security concerns about the Chinese social network.
On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a real star of social networks, entered the program and announced the change: “TikTok, we are back.”
The city will now allow agencies to start posting again on the short social media site as long as departments follow a set of security precautions, according to a memo from city security officials released by the mayor’s office.
The ban was initiated by Eric Adams, Mamdani’s predecessor, in 2023, as the federal government and many US states blocked software from state-owned devices out of concern that its parent company, ByteDance, could share data with the Chinese government.
TikTok had dismissed the government’s concerns as unfounded. Since then it has reached an agreement to stop its operation in the United States in a move to reduce those concerns and avoid further bans in the country.
Democratic Socialist Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City
Democratic Socialist Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City
In a memo Tuesday, the NYC Cyber Command, which is in charge of protecting the city’s systems from cyber threats, wrote that the changes were about expanding the city’s communications reach.
