President Joe Biden's 2024 campaign is now on TikTok, even though he has raised national security concerns about the platform and
banned it on federal devices.
Biden is not expected to personally join the platform, his aides said, nor are other members of his administration.
The account
will be managed entirely by the campaign team
in an effort to reach voters in an increasingly fragmented American population, particularly as younger voters move away from traditional platforms.
Photograph shows a close-up of the video-sharing application 'TikTok'.
Photo: EFE
The inaugural post showed the president being questioned about the
Super Bowl
and included a reference to the latest political conspiracy theory centered on music superstar Taylor Swift.
The Super Bowl is an annual sporting event held in the United States and is considered the most important game in professional American football.
Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that TikTok's owner,
ByteDance
, could share user data, such as browsing history, location, and biometric identifiers,
with China's authoritarian government
.
Joe and Jill Biden arrive at the White House on the Marine One helicopter. Photo: Bloomberg
Biden in 2022 banned the use of TikTok by the federal government's nearly 4 million employees on devices owned by their agencies, with limited exceptions for law enforcement, national security and security research purposes.
The secretive and powerful Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
has been reviewing the application for years.
Campaign officials said they were taking advanced security precautions and incorporating protocols to ensure security, but
did not detail the measures
or provide information on whether the measures were intended to
protect campaign or voter data.
A law implemented by China in 2017
requires companies
to provide the government with any personal data relevant to the
country's national security.
There is no evidence that TikTok has handed over such data, but fears abound due to
the large amount of user data
it collects, like other social media companies.
The Biden campaign said the
BidenHQ
account would regularly post content on the platform.
Biden banned the use of TikTok for the nearly 4 million federal government employees in 2022.
Photo: VALERIE MACON / AFP
Biden's campaign maintains a presence on
Meta's Threads, Instagram, Facebook, X
, formerly Twitter, and
Truth Social
, the platform backed by Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
The president's campaign has been
prioritizing social media engagement
, as well as smaller events the president participates in, to reach target voters he believes
don't tune into traditional media
.
The campaign and the White House have also stepped up outreach to social media influencers who they believe can amplify the president's message.
With information from the Associated Press