New Delhi, Aug. 12 -- The federal government banned TikTok from its workers' phones in 2022 because Congress concluded that ByteDance, the app's Beijing-based parent company, was a national security risk too significant for data privacy commitments to paper over. On Tuesday, the White House's Office of Management and Budget told agencies they can take TikTok off the prohibited list. The tool that prompted four years of restriction, the recommendation algorithm that determines what hundreds of millions of users see and when they see it, remains under ByteDance's control.

it prohibited the version of TikTok developed or provided by ByteDance from being installed on any device issued by the federal government. More than 20 American states, ...