US President Joe Biden has a TikTok account, even with US government bans

TikTok remains one of the most controversial social networking services in the world due to the fact that its parent company, ByteDance, is based in China. However, that hasn"t stopped it from reaching over 1 billion monthly active users, and it does not seem to be a problem for the US President and his election campaign.

On Sunday evening, just before Super Bowl LVIII, the official campaign to reelect Joe Biden as the US President launched its own TikTok account. The first video on the account had President Biden give his thoughts on the game before it started, and it has generated 4.2 million views so far.

Even though Biden"s campaign might have a TikTok account, the Biden administration has cracked down on the use of the service on government-owned devices. In late February 2023, the US government officially ordered its employees to delete the TikTok app from their work phones and other devices.

The US government feels that because TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, personal data from the service could be taken and used by the Chinese government. ByteDance has repeatedly denied these allegations. However, that has not stopped governments around the world from ordering their workers to get rid of TikTok from their phones.

CNBC reports that when asked why the Biden reelection campaign would launch an official TikTok account, its advisers stated it was an effort to try to reach more voters. The story cites a Pew Research survey from late 2023, indicating that a third of the people in the US aged 18-29 claim they get news from TikTok on a regular basis.

Still, the launching of an official Biden reelection TikTok account does seem to be in conflict with what Biden and the US government have said in the past about the social service. In March 2023, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) stated that TikTok should be spun off from ByteDance into its own company to avoid a full ban.