City of Kilgore bans TikTok on city-owned devices

Published 3:45 pm Friday, November 29, 2024

KILGORE — The City of Kilgore has banned popular social media app TikTok from all city-issued smartphones and devices. The policy update, implemented at a recent council meeting, brings the city in line with a similar measure implemented by the Texas governor.

Landon Ward, the city’s finance director, told council members and city staff the policy change, Resolution No. 24-14, was being put forward to bring the city into conformance with the similar policy for state officials and employees. Many other cities in Texas have passed similar policy updates recently.

“This policy is pushed down to us from the state,” Ward said.

“Essentially, it is a TikTok policy that prohibits the city and its staff from downloading TikTok or using that (app) on city-owned devices. It’s coming from the state so we need to adopt this and push forward with it.”

Mayor Ronnie Spradlin asked if the policy would also apply to privately-owned cell phones and devices for which a city employees receives reimbursement.

City attorney Josh {span}Brockman-Weber{/span} advised that this specific issue is in a murky area awaiting additional guidance from the state, though he noted the state policy could be updated and even extended in the future.

“They wouldn’t have any guidance on that yet. It could be applied to things other than TikTok in the future but that’s all we have right now,” Brockman-Weber said.

Council member Alan VanDoren put forward the motion to adopt the updated policy and council member Randy Renshaw seconded the motion. The resolution was adopted by the council unanimously.

TikTok got its start as a popular video-sharing app in China in 2016. The following year, the app rebranded and its parent company acquired another app called Musical.ly, merging the two together to become one of the most popular and frequently visited apps and websites in existence, with TikTok being downloaded billions of times and its total website visits rivaling that of search engine Google.

Because the company behind the app is based in Beijing, U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns about user data being collected and analyzed by members of the Chinese Communist Party. In 2020, President Donald Trump discussed banning the app altogether and in 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott banned TikTok from all government-issued devices in the state. Since that time, cities in Texas have been following suit by banning the app in their jurisdictions.

More than 30 other states have enacted similar bans over the last several years.