Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a ban prohibiting the use of social media and AI apps affiliated with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on government-issued devices.
Though TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company Bytedance, is banned on government devices in over 30 states, this is the first time a state has cracked down on having other Chinese-produced apps on government devices. The ban impacted six apps in total: the AI model DeepSeek, the social media apps Lemon8 and RedNote, as well as the stock trading apps Moomoo, Tiger Brokers, and Webull.
“Texas will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate our state’s critical infrastructure through data-harvesting AI and social media apps,” said Abbott. In the official filing, he dubbed the apps “a security risk to the state of Texas.”
The news of the ban comes as many of these Chinese-made apps and tools have hugely spiked in popularity. DeepSeek drew widespread praise for its AI model’s low costs and impressive performance, with some commentators calling it a ‘Sputnik moment,’ a reference to how the Soviet Union successfully launched the first satellite into space, a major moment in the ‘space race’ with the US.
Visits to the AI model’s website spiked from just 300,000 per day to six million. DeepSeek is also attracting plenty of attention from other political powers that be. President Donald Trump called DeepSeek’s recent spike in popularity a “wake-up call” for American companies at an annual policy retreat earlier this week.
RedNote, a short-form video-focused social network that bears broad similarities to TikTok, also experienced a huge upsurge in popularity in the run-up to the original TikTok blackout on Jan. 19, at one point gaining over 200,000 users in one month. However, its popularity dropped by around 50% in a single day after TikTok resumed availability.
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Abbott has been shown to take a firm hand when it comes to Chinese technology in the past. Texas became one of the first US states to ban TikTok on government devices in December 2022, just a few weeks after South Dakota.
The crackdown on Chinese tech comes as the fate of TikTok remains highly uncertain; Trump signed an executive order commanding the Department of Justice not to take any action to enforce the ban for 75 days as the White House looks to secure a deal. Unconfirmed reports have surfaced of the White House brokering a deal to save TikTok involving enterprise software giant Oracle.
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About Will McCurdy
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