What will happen to Florida’s ban on TikTok now that there’s a U.S.-China deal?
Nobody is saying, but it might be too soon for students and government workers to expect to be able to open their “FYP” on the social media platform in classrooms or on state-owned phones or tablets.
Gov. Ron DeSantis banned TikTok in May 2023 from government devices and networks, citing cybersecurity concerns, such as illicit data harvesting by China’s Communist Party. This week, the governor’s office didn’t respond to questions about the future of TikTok in Florida.
TikTok late Thursday announced what it described as a new, majority American-owned business entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, that it said will protect the data of the 200 million American users of the social media platform. The Trump administration had set Thursday as the deadline for the deal to be completed.
Some terms of the deal for what some are calling a new “American TikTok” still haven’t been made public. TikTok said the new U.S. venture will retrain, test and update the algorithm used to recommend new content for American users, and the algorithm will be secured on servers run by Oracle Inc., one of the venture’s new partners.
When the governor banned TikTok, DeSantis said any benefit from the popular social media app “is clearly outweighed by the benefit that the CCP (Chinese Community Party) gets from data mining and being able to collect information.”
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TikTok’s lobbyists in Tallahassee declined to answer questions about the platform ban. Corporate officials at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles did not respond to emails this week asking about the issue.
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.
Katie Betta, deputy chief of staff for the Senate President, said she wasn’t aware of any senators closely following the issue of how or when to restore broader access to TikTok in Florida.
The senator who sponsored the ban was Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills. It passed unanimously through its committees before the Legislature passed a companion bill from the House by Rep. Bradford Troy ''Brad'' Yeager, R-New Port Richey. The senator’s staff said they haven’t heard any new information about Florida’s TikTok ban related to its U.S. sale.
At the time, Burgess called TikTok “a literal spyware app that has no place on government devices.”
Staffers from the Senate Democratic Caucus and the House Office of the Speaker said the same.
Yeager’s bill in 2023 banned TikTok “or any successor platform” 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 “promote any district school, school-sponsored club, extracurricular organization or athletic team.”
A lawmaker on the House technology policy subcommittee, Rep. Fabián Basabe, R-Miami Beach, said he remains concerned about the use of TikTok despite the sale. He said a change in ownership doesn’t signify that underlying data security, governance or enforcement concerns have been resolved.
“My focus is on whether any sale meaningfully addresses data access, control and compliance, particularly as it relates to public institutions and law enforcement,” he said. “Until that is clearly established, it would be premature to discuss lifting restrictions."
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The Education Department – which oversees the state’s public schools and colleges – and the State University System – which oversees Florida’s 12 public universities – 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.
“School districts are responsible for complying with Florida law and State Board of Education rule regarding the protection of student data," said Nathalia Medina, the press secretary for the Education Department.
Some college student TikTok influencers said the existing ban hasn’t affected how or what they post on the platform – they just can’t 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.
“I don't think anyone was really scared about data,” said Sofia Varon, a senior at the University of Florida with more than 200,000 followers on TikTok. “They were just scared about their income going away.”
She has been posting lifestyle and college-related videos to her account since her freshman year in 2022.
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’s “for you” page, or FYP.
“It kind of hurt engagement just due to the fact that I feel like you can get on more for-you-pages on TikTok,” Varon said.
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.
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 zherukhamarta@ufl.edu.
