France follows the Tiktok ban in other countries, but goes a lot further and also targets American apps.
French officials are no longer allowed to install Tiktok, as well as Twitter, Netflix and Candy Crush on their work phones. The French Ministry of Transformation and the Public Service announced the social media ban on Friday.
“The level of cybersecurity and data protection of the recreational apps is not sufficient to be used on the administration’s devices,” the Ministry of Transformation and the Public Office said in a press statement. “Those apps can therefore pose a risk to the protection of the data of the administrations and their public officials.”
A Tiktok ban already applies to the devices of officials in many Western countries, including the US, the Netherlands and Belgium. The European institutions also have such a ban and the British public broadcaster BBC has asked its employees to remove Tiktok from company phones. But the French measure goes much further, although there is not yet a complete list of banned apps. Moreover, exceptions can be made for ‘institutional communication’.
Even before the ban, a government spokesperson indicated that neither ministers nor President Emmanuel Macron could use apps like Tiktok or Instagram on their work phones.
