France is the latest country to take action to ban TikTok on government-managed devices. Stanislas Guerini, Minister for Transformation and Public Services, and his services have issued a statement announcing the move and the reasoning behind this change.
But there's a twist: instead of just banning just TikTon, the french government is saying that all recreational apps are now banned on work devices.
"Since a few weeks, several European and international partners have taken measures to limit or prohibit the download and installation of the TikTok application by their public administrations", wrote the French government.
For example, the US House of Representatives banned TikTok on lawmakers' government mobile devices, as did Canada. The European Commission issued a directive asking all employees to remove TikTok from their work devices.
In all these cases, public bodies state that they are concerned about data privacy. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a private Chinese company, and these governments believe that user data could be stored and accessed by the Chinese government.
TikTok has said multiple times that the company does not share user data with the Chinese government. The company has tried to reassure European governments by saying that in the near future it will create and run multiple data centers to store local user data in Europe.
In addition to this data sovereignty strategy, TikTok is “reducing employee access to European user data; minimizing data flows outside of Europe," wrote Rich Waterworth, TikTok's general manager of European operations.
Of course, it means governments have to take TikTok's word for it, which doesn't seem to be the case in France. «After an analysis of what is at stake, in particular security, the Government has decided to prohibit from now on the download and installation of recreational applications on professional telephones made available to public agents», has declared the Ministry of Transformation and Public Services.
What exactly is a recreational app? Guerini's office told the AFP and AP news agencies that some of these apps include TikTok (obviously), as well as Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Candy Crush and other games, as well as dating apps.
It seems like a broad and imprecise concept, and I hope they clarify the exact scope of the recreational category. We have contacted Guerini's office and will update this article if we get more details.
“Recreational applications do not have a sufficient level of cybersecurity and data protection to be deployed on government equipment. Therefore, these applications may pose a risk to the data protection of these administrations and their public officials», wrote the French government.
A message has been sent to all ministries. The interministerial digital administration (DINUM) and the cybersecurity agency (ANSSI) will give more specific instructions on the application of the ban.
There will be one notable exception: If you need to install an application to communicate the work of your administration, you will be able to do so. In other words, if you're a social media manager, you'll be able to install Twitter, Facebook, and yes, TikTok.
