US President Joe Biden campaign joins TikTok, despite security concerns
US President Joe Biden‘s re-election campaign has defended its new TikTok account as a vital way to boost its appeal with young voters, even as his administration continues to raise security concerns about whether the popular social media app might be sharing user data with China’s communist government.
The campaign’s inaugural post featured the president being quizzed on Sunday’s Super Bowl - and included a reference to the latest political conspiracy theory about pop superstar Taylor Swift.
“The president’s TikTok debut last night — with more than five million views and counting — is proof positive of both our commitment and success in finding new, innovative ways to reach voters in an evolving, fragmented, and increasingly personalised media environment,” Biden re-election deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty said in a statement on Monday.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.At the White House, though, national security spokesman John Kirby said “There are still national security concerns about the use of TikTok on government devices and there’s been no change to our policy not to allow that.”
Kirby referred most questions about TikTok to the Biden campaign and ducked a more general query about whether it was wise to use the app at all. He said the potential security issues “have to do with concerns about the preservation of data and potential misuse of that data and privacy information by foreign actors.”
Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, could share user data — such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers — with that country’s authoritarian government.
Biden in 2022 signed legislation banning the use of TikTok by the federal government’s nearly four million employees on devices owned by its agencies, with limited exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes.
With 150 million US users, TikTok is best known for quick snippets of viral dance routines.
The Biden campaign said it had been mulling establishing a TikTok account for months and had ultimately done so at the urging of youth activists.
