By right, your work phone and work computers should contain stuff that’s just for work only. At least for the sake of professionalism. But we get it; sometimes you need a little breather. The good news for US federal employees is that you can download TikTok on your work phones again.
Federal employees can download TikTok again
For those unfamiliar, before the whole TikTok US government deal, there was a slow and steady move to ban the use of TikTok in the US. It started with US federal employees who weren’t allowed to download TikTok on their phones. But now, according to a report from Reuters, it looks like they can.
According to a memo from the Department of Justice, it seems that US President Donald Trump has essentially cleared TikTok for use by federal employees. It reads, “We understand you have since instructed that employees of Executive Branch agencies may download TikTok onto their official devices, subject to the agency’s discretion and consistent with all applicable workplace policies.”
Obviously the goal isn’t to tell government employees that it’s okay to use TikTok at work. But rather, the underlying message suggests that the app is now “safe” for use on government devices.
The whole saga
As a quick recap on what went down, back in 2020, Trump proposed the idea of banning TikTok. His successor, US President Joe Biden, followed through by signing a law that mandated that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, sell off TikTok to a US company or face a ban in the US.
However, when Trump became president for the second time, he delayed the ban. This was despite the fact that it was him who proposed it in the first place. Instead, Trump spent a good amount of time trying to negotiate with various companies, including the Chinese government, to allow TikTok to be sold to a US company.
The deal was eventually closed, where TikTok’s security would now be handled and audited by Oracle. The app’s algorithm would also be retrained on US user data. It should be noted that ByteDance still has a stake in TikTok. Albeit a much smaller one.
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