Why would city owned devices even need to have TikTok legitimately installed on them anyway?

Every time I see a report like this I always have exactly the same question.

Oh, the national nuclear commission has banned TikTok from its devices. I'm sure the inspectors will find this a blow to their work.

I have just done a scan of 1,083 of our devices (those are the ones that are currently switched on and have internet access), of which zero have TikTok installed. As far as I'm aware we haven't actually banned its installation. For context, almost all of them have Netflix installed. The average age of the employees is about 40. But there are a lot of 20 somethings.

I'm sure some of them will have TikTok, but they obviously have it on their personal phones.

So every time I see announcements like this I'm positive it's just political posturing and has no actual impact at all.

Well, that makes sense. There's no need for government employees to be leaking government data to a foreign government; and there is no way to use TikTok on a device without exposing all the things.

It would be better still if governments demanded open-source devices that can be meaningfully audited and verified to uphold good privacy standards, because there's no need for government employees to be leaking government data to domestic ads companies either.

Why was it allowed in the first place? Generally I'm pro freedom but in this case the phones should be locked down and there should be a whitelist of apps they can install. It's not a personal phone.

This is like saying teachers are banned from using trojan brand condoms at work.

1. This is just one of many apps that could be a problem, banning one solves nothing
2. The entire category of social media apps has no place on a work device (except if you are in marketing)
3. If it's not a work related app, it shouldn't be on the work device full stop. Idgaf if it's fucking Google sheets, if you're not using it for work purposes it doesn't belong there

This new law is like 3 levels of abstraction away from actually addressing any problem, and likely wasn't a problem in the first place for any competent organization.

Good. Do Twitter, Instagram and Facebook next. NYC should be running it's own platforms for information dissemination and citizen engagement.