Livingston Parish is considering banning Tik Tok from all parish government computers and cell phones, including the library system.
The parish council will hear more on a new ordinance proposing the local government ban the social media app at its meeting tomorrow evening.
Concerns about the social media app go far beyond Livingston Parish. Last month, the United States mandated that all federal employees delete the Chinese-owned social media app from government-issued mobile phones over national security concerns.
Congress, the White House, U.S. armed forces and more than half of U.S. states had already banned the app over concerns that its parent company, ByteDance, would give user data to the Chinese government.
Although the ordinance covers the app’s presence on all Livingston Parish government devices, the proposal’s sponsor, Council member Garry “Frog” Talbert, singled out the library system’s computers in the agenda item text.
Local libraries and content available to minors have been a flashpoint in Livingston Parish in recent months.
Talbert, who is running for a statehouse seat, revealed at a council meeting earlier this year that he had hired a private investigator to test library computers to see how effectively the system’s internet firewall blocks pornography.
The investigator managed to access pornography on a library computer via “backdoor” methods, such as through Reddit or Twitter, instead of through popular websites dedicated to such explicit content, Talbert said.
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