US President Joe Biden signs up for TikTok
High-ranking officials in the United States are prohibited from registering on TikTok. Despite this, Joe Biden recently created his own account there. This was noticed, in particular, by Wired. Here’s why it’s interesting.
During Sunday’s Super Bowl, President Joe Biden’s campaign announced the creation of his TikTok account with the hashtag @BidenHQ. In his first video, Biden answers a question about his preferences for the Super Bowl. This video was captioned “Lol, hello, friends.”
As a reminder, since 2022, half a dozen Western countries have banned TikTok from government devices, including Taiwan, the United States, Canada, Latvia, Denmark, Belgium, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, concerned about the risk of China using the app for espionage and information theft. Among the official institutions, the EU and NATO have introduced a full or partial ban on TikTok on government devices.
As for the United States, the Biden administration then demanded that TikTok’s Chinese owners sell their shares in exchange for permission to continue operating the service in the United States.
Biden’s campaign advisers will justify the decision to finally join the platform by the need to be closer to voters. As a reminder, this year the United States is holding presidential elections. “A few years ago, young voters were practically ignored. Now we have more political power than ever before, and the incumbent’s campaign is on TikTok. On TikTok, Biden’s campaign will reach millions of young people, some of whom might not otherwise have heard about the president’s accomplishments in areas ranging from climate change to education,” said Jack Lobel, national spokesperson for Voters for the Future.
Biden’s campaign advisers said they are taking enhanced security measures to protect their data and devices. TikTok is currently banned on most federal devices, and Biden’s spokesman said the team logs into TikTok on a separate device used specifically to work with the app.
