NEW YORK \u2014 Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to permit at least some city government employees and agencies to use TikTok, reversing a ban his predecessor enacted out of data security concerns.<\/p>\n
Mamdani, whose prolific social media use became a hallmark of his successful 2025 mayoral campaign, was set to announce the reversal of the TikTok prohibition as early as Tuesday, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.<\/p>\n
The people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the new policy, told POLITICO that Mamdani will make the ban\u2019s rollback official in a TikTok video posted to the @nycmayor account, which has been inactive since 2023 when former Mayor Eric Adams banned the app from being used on city government devices.<\/p>\n
Besides resurrecting the @nycmayor account, Mamdani is expected to allow at least some city government agencies to start operating on TikTok again, said one of the people.<\/p>\n
The lifting of the city\u2019s TikTok ban has not been reported previously.<\/p>\n
Following in the footsteps of a number of other U.S. cities and states, Adams\u2019 administration announced in August 2023<\/a> that TikTok would no longer be allowed on city government devices. At the time, U.S. officials were raising concern that TikTok\u2019s parent company, ByteDance, was too closely tied to the Chinese government, opening the door to Beijing potentially gaining access to sensitive American user data.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump tried to ban TikTok outright in the U.S. in 2020 over the platform\u2019s Chinese government ties. But after his second inauguration, Trump has shifted course and sought ways to let the app remain operational in the U.S.<\/p>\n In light of Trump\u2019s change of heart, TikTok, which denies sharing data with the Chinese government, has taken steps to separate itself from Beijing.<\/p>\n