Ohio House passes legislation to ban TikTok on government devices; bill now heads to Senate

State Rep. D.J. Swearingen (R-Huron) announced the passage of House Bill 17 and House Bill 191 in the Ohio House of Representatives on Wednesday.

House Bill 17 will prohibit state employees from downloading or using TikTok and other applications owned by Chinese entities on government devices; this bill will not prohibit state employees from using the applications on personal devices.

“The issue of maintaining cybersecurity is bipartisan and necessary; it’s an issue that impacts all Ohioans,” Swearingen said in a statement. “I am excited to see this important bill progress in the Ohio Senate.”

According to previous reporting from News 5 and the Ohio Capital Journal, other lawmakers questioned why this bill did not dive further into other social media platforms.

“We know Facebook has already been accused of selling, proven actually, to sell our data,” said Rep. Munira Abduallahi, D-Columbus. “So why doesn’t this bill go into more social media? I think they all pose a security risk at some point.”

Previous reporting states the legislation lists specific applications other than TikTok, such as Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Alipay and others.

House Bill 191 will codify Criminal Rule 46, which covers the pretrial release and detention for those accused of a crime.

Both pieces of legislation will now move to the Ohio Senate for consideration.