![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/FLGR-Ad-728x90-RESULTS-Set-1-e1741815738516.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen the Governor banned TikTok, DeSantis said any benefit from the popular social media app \u201cis clearly outweighed by the benefit that the CCP (Chinese Community Party) gets from data mining and being able to collect information.\u201d<\/p>\n
TikTok\u2019s lobbyists in Tallahassee declined to answer questions about the platform ban. Corporate officials at the company\u2019s U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles did not respond to emails this week asking about the issue.<\/p>\n
None of the 1,792 legislative proposals being considered so far in the House and Senate in Tallahassee this year would lift the TikTok ban after its sale to U.S. investors. Lawmakers instead are focused for now on other tech-related topics, such as whether or how to regulate artificial intelligence. The Legislature is meeting through March 13.<\/p>\n
Katie Betta, Deputy Chief of Staff for the Senate President, said she wasn\u2019t aware of any senators closely following the issue of how or when to restore broader access to TikTok in Florida.<\/p>\n
The Senator who sponsored the ban was Danny Burgess, a Zephyrhills Republican. It passed unanimously through its committees before the Legislature passed a companion bill from the House by Rep. Brad\u2019 Yeager, a New Port Richey Republican. The Senator\u2019s staff said they haven\u2019t heard any new information about Florida\u2019s TikTok ban related to its U.S. sale.<\/p>\n
At the time, Burgess called TikTok \u201ca literal spyware app that has no place on government devices.\u201d<\/p>\n Staffers from the Senate Democratic Caucus and the House Office of the Speaker said the same.<\/p>\n Yeager\u2019s bill in 2023 banned TikTok \u201cor any successor platform\u201d and did not specify that the objection related to its Chinese ownership. It blocked the app on school networks and prohibited teachers or administrators using it to communicate with students or to \u201cpromote any district school, school-sponsored club, extracurricular organization or athletic team.\u201d<\/p>\n A lawmaker on the House technology policy subcommittee, Rep. Fabi\u00e1n Basabe, a Miami Beach Republican, said he remains concerned about the use of TikTok despite the sale. He said a change in ownership doesn\u2019t signify that underlying data security, governance or enforcement concerns have been resolved.<\/p>\n \u201cMy focus is on whether any sale meaningfully addresses data access, control and compliance, particularly as it relates to public institutions and law enforcement,\u201d he said. \u201cUntil that is clearly established, it would be premature to discuss lifting restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n The Education Department \u2014 which oversees the state\u2019s public schools and colleges \u2014 and the State University System \u2014 which oversees Florida\u2019s 12 public universities \u2014 each said reversing the TikTok ban was out of their hands since the ban came in the form of a law signed by the governor.<\/p>\n \u201cSchool Districts are responsible for complying with Florida law and State Board of Education rule regarding the protection of student data,\u201d said Nathalia Medina, the Press Secretary for the Florida Education Department.<\/p>\n Some college student TikTok influencers said the existing ban hasn\u2019t affected how or what they post on the platform \u2014 they just can\u2019t use college or university WiFi networks to do it. One said she and other influencers were more worried about the threat of a wholesale TikTok shutdown under the Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone was really scared about data,\u201d said Sofia Varon, a senior at the University of Florida with more than 200,000 followers on TikTok. \u201cThey were just scared about their income going away.\u201d<\/p>\n She has been posting lifestyle and college-related videos to her account since her freshman year in 2022.<\/p>\n Varon said a ban on posting to TikTok for student government and athletic team accounts limits their audience reach to viewers on other platforms, such as Instagram or Snapchat. TikTok serves content through its proprietary algorithm to a user\u2019s \u201cfor you\u201d page, or FYP.<\/p>\n \u201cIt kind of hurt engagement just due to the fact that I feel like you can get on more for-you-pages on TikTok,\u201d Varon said.<\/p>\n The new agreement signed by TikTok and the United States would place 50% of a new, American version of TikTok in the hands of new investors. Affiliates of existing investors will hold 30.1% of the new app. ByteDance, the Chinese company that created the original app, will hold 19.9%. This new group is meant to retrain the algorithm the app uses to protect American user data.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/a>. You can donate to support our students\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What will happen to Florida\u2019s ban on TikTok now that there\u2019s a U.S.-China deal? Nobody is saying, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[58269,14585,5186,409,16438,28,30,29,64946,64947,412,3709,64948],"class_list":{"0":"post-131929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-brad-yeager","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-danny-burgess","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-fabian-basabe","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-florida-headlines","15":"tag-florida-news","16":"tag-katie-betta","17":"tag-nathalia-medina","18":"tag-ron-desantis","19":"tag-tiktok","20":"tag-tiktok-usds-joint-venture-llc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/JS-728x90-1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n