LOUISIANA SECRETARY OF STATE KYLE ARDOIN AND STATE REPRESENTATIVE DARYL DESHOTEL TO PURSUE LEGISLATION TO BAN TIKTOK ON STATE DEVICES

BATON ROUGE, La. — Today, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin and District 28 State Representative Daryl Deshotel announced that they would pursue legislation in 2023 to ban TikTok on all state-owned devices.

 “TikTok is a clear and present danger to our national security and election integrity,” Representative Deshotel said. “TikTok is a Chinese company with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The last thing we need to do is give them access to the data on our state devices. We have seen first-hand that foreign agents will go to any length necessary to gather important intelligence on the United States using social media applications and sophisticated data collection. This is a commonsense piece of legislation.”

“I am grateful to be teaming up with Representative Deshotel after his announcement that he would pre-file a bill to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok on state-issued devices. TikTok is a threat to our citizens' personal data and has no business on any device owned by the State of Louisiana,” Ardoin said. “Representative Deshotel and I believe we should be doing everything we can to protect our constituents’ personally identifiable information. This bill will help do just that.”

Earlier this week, Secretary Ardoin announced that he was banning TikTok on Department of State-owned devices and wrote to Governor John Bel Edwards urging him to issue a ban on all state-owned devices.

To view or download the official press release, click here.