White House Says TikTok Concerns Remain Despite Biden Campaign Joining The Platform

The White House said national security and privacy concerns still exist around TikTok despite President Joe Biden’s campaign joining the platform Sunday.

Biden signed a ban on the download and use of the social platform, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, on government-owned devices in December 2022.

John Kirby, the National Security Council’s spokesperson, told reporters Monday that the issues that prompted the imposition of the ban for government-owned devices have not been resolved and that the policy remains in place.

“I don’t want to get into too much of the national security, technical reasons behind that. It does have to do with concerns about the preservation of data and the potential misuse of that data and privacy information by foreign actors,” Kirby said. “I think that’s as far as I can go.”

He added that questions about the president’s decision to join TikTok should be directed to his reelection campaign.

His campaign advisers have said they are taking “advanced security precautions” with regard to their use of TikTok, according to The Wall Street Journal.

TikTok is under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reportedly threatened to fully ban the app in the U.S. last year unless its Chinese owners sold their stake in the company.

Kirby refused to comment on the progress of the CFIUS review, saying they are an “independent body.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added that she had no advance notice that Biden’s campaign was planning to join TikTok.

“I do not communicate with the campaign on any strategy or anything like that,” Jean-Pierre said. “And so, I’m just very, very mindful of that.”

The first post on the Biden campaign’s TikTok account,