South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed on Wednesday an executive order banning state employees and contractors from accessing TikTok on state-owned devices due to security concerns over the Chinese owners of the video platform, The Hill has reported.
"South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence gathering operations of nations who hate us," the Republican governor said in a statement. "The Chinese Communist Party uses information that it gathers on TikTok to manipulate the American people, and they gather data off the devices that access the platform."
She added that "because of our serious duty to protect the private data of South Dakota citizens, we must take this action immediately. I hope other states will follow South Dakota's lead, and Congress should take broader action, as well."
The Trump administration failed in its attempt to ban the social media platform in 2020, and earlier this year Senate Republicans wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stating that the Biden administration was not taking seriously national security concerns regarding the issue.
Also this month another prominent voice called for a ban, as Brendan Carr, one of the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission, told Axios that "I don't believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban. There simply isn't a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it's not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party]."
Regarding the security concerns, TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas has previously said the company protects all data of American users and that Chinese government officials have no access to it, The Guardian reported.
U.S. officials and TikTok are currently in negotiations over a possible agreement that would resolve American security concerns.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.