NYC paid nearly $300K for TikTok ads despite FBI’s security warnings

City Hall spent $297,568 in public funds last fiscal year on TikTok ads, long after the feds sounded the alarm over the Chinese government potentially using the app to sow discord in the United States.

In Nov. 2022, FBI Director Chris Wray deemed TikTok a national security concern, highlighting that the video-sharing platform, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, could be used by the Chinese government for data collection and to manipulate its recommendation algorithm for “influence operations.”

President Biden signed a bipartisan bill the following month prohibiting use of the app on federal government devices. 

City agencies nonetheless continued to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into ad campaign rollouts on the app, including an $85,000 push in June by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice targeting Gen-Z New Yorkers.

Other campaigns during this period highlighted translation services available at the city’s public schools for students and their families; encouraged COVID vaccinations; and announced the city’s annual “Open Streets: Car Free Earth Day,” according spending data from the Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media.

“With across the board service cuts and 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,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) told the Post.   

In August, Mayor Adams’ administration banned the use of TikTok on all government devices over concerns of Chinese espionage.

A spokesperson for the mayor said City Hall’s last TikTok ads were rolled out in June as it was preparing its ban on the app.

Jose Bayona, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media, said his agency previously used TikTok to inform younger New Yorkers and various communities about services and critical information, but ceased doing so as the Adams administration deemed the app a security threat.

“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.

A TikTok spokesperson insisted that there is no evidence that TikTok is a security threat to the United States and the company is taking steps to improve security for users’ data.

“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.