New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Tuesday that his administration is reversing a ban prohibiting public employees and agencies from using TikTok.
Former Mayor Eric Adams implemented the ban in 2023, amid concerns surrounding the social media platform’s ties to China.
Mamdani is rolling back the policy this week, reviving the mayor’s TikTok account, and permitting at least some city government employees and agencies to use the app.
“In a fragmented media landscape, more and more people—especially younger people—are looking beyond the four corners of their television screen to stay informed,” Mamdani told Wired. “Our responsibility is simple: Meet people where they are. That means stepping outside our comfort zones and communicating in ways that reflect how New Yorkers actually live, work, and connect.”
To use TikTok, agencies will be required to use separate, government-issued devices for the app that “cannot contain sensitive or restricted data, and they cannot be used for email, internal systems, or privileged access,” according to an email sent to city agencies.
Mamdani’s social media prowess was viewed as one of the key elements that helped the socialist reach young voters and secure his ascension to City Hall in November 2025.
Congress passed a law in 2024 banning ByteDance’s TikTok from public usage if it did not divest of Chinese ownership, due to concerns that the Chinese Communist Party was essentially controlling the app. President Donald Trump last year skirted the ban by pushing the platform to assume a separate U.S. platform for domestic users. The deal creating the U.S. version of TikTok was finalized in January, though ByteDance retains an ownership stake in the overall entity.
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Earlier this month, the deal was challenged in a lawsuit by Meta and Alphabet investors, who alleged the administration’s TikTok deal did not cut off ByteDance’s “operational relationship” with the U.S. TikTok entity.
“In short, under the announced deal, ByteDance would still control all the essential elements of TikTok,” the lawsuit reads. “Such a deal would subvert the very purpose of the TikTok Law, as ByteDance could continue to push Chinese propaganda and censor the content it does not like, exactly the harm that the law was intended to prevent.”
