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Edited by: Fern Sidman
In a controversial move, City Hall reportedly spent $297,568 in public funds on TikTok ads during the last fiscal year, despite increasing concerns at the federal level about the potential national security risks associated with the popular Chinese owned social media platform, as was reported by the New York Post.
The FBI, led by Director Chris Wray, raised alarms about TikTok’s connections to the Chinese government in November 2022. According to the Post report, Wray emphasized the platform’s ownership by Beijing-based ByteDance, warning that it could be exploited by the Chinese government for data collection and manipulation of its recommendation algorithm, potentially facilitating “influence operations.”
In response to these concerns, President Biden signed a bipartisan bill in December of the same year, prohibiting the use of TikTok on federal government devices. Despite this federal stance, City agencies continued to allocate substantial sums to TikTok ad campaigns throughout the last fiscal year, as was noted in the Post report.
The spending included an $85,000 initiative by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice in June, targeting Gen-Z New Yorkers. The report in the Post also said that other campaigns during this period aimed to promote translation services in public schools, encourage COVID-19 vaccinations, and announce the city’s annual “Open Streets: Car Free Earth Day.”
Criticism has arisen from various quarters, with Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) stating, “With across-the-board service cuts and a hiring freeze that will prohibit thousands of retiring police officers from being replaced, the last thing the Mayor should have been doing is spending money on advertising, particularly on TikTok that lines the coffers of Communist China,” the Post reported.
In August, Mayor Adams’ administration took a significant step by banning the use of TikTok on all government devices due to concerns about Chinese espionage, as was indicated in the Post report. A spokesperson for the mayor noted that City Hall’s last TikTok ads were rolled out in June as the administration prepared to impose the ban.
Jose Bayona, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media, explained that the agency had previously used TikTok to engage younger New Yorkers and various communities, providing information about services and critical initiatives, according to the Post report. However, as the Adams administration deemed TikTok a security threat, the city ceased such activities.
“We continue to use a range of strategies and social media platforms to connect New Yorkers to critical services, inform them about important initiatives, and provide essential information,” Bayona said, the Post report said.
A TikTok spokesperson responded to the concerns, insisting that there is no evidence to suggest TikTok poses a security threat to the United States. The Post report also said that the spokesperson highlighted the company’s commitment to enhancing security for user data and mentioned an initiative, undertaken at TikTok’s expense, to build a secure environment for U.S. user data, aiming to protect the platform from external influence.
“We take national security concerns seriously and have launched an initiative — voluntarily and at TikTok’s expense — to build a secure environment for U.S. user data that will protect our platform from outside influence, and put additional safeguards on our content recommendation and moderation tools,” they said, according to the Post report.
The City’s use of TikTok for advertising purposes raises questions about the balance between public outreach and potential national security risks.
