Dan Andrews has been slow to delete his hugely popular TikTok account, despite claiming he would ditch the controversial app amid fears of spying in China
- Victorian Prime Minister has been slow to remove his TikTok
- States following federal government ban on the app
Daniel Andrews remains on TikTok despite pledging to delete his account as part of Victoria’s withdrawal from the popular but controversial Chinese social media app.
The Victorian premier said his government and state officials will follow Commonwealth rules and remove the app from any official Victorian device.
As part of the announcement last week, Mr Andrews revealed that he would also close his own TikTok account, which has 109,700 followers.
Mr Andrews made the announcement shortly after returning to Australia from a four-day trip to China, Victoria’s largest trading partner.
He met with several senior government officials, including China’s Education Minister Huai Jinpeng and Beijing Mayor Yin Yon.
Daniel Andrews announced a Victorian government ban on TikTok shortly after returning to Australia from a four-day trip to China. He expressed no concerns about the security of the app while there
Andrews is a big user of TikTok and often appears in his videos in a helmet and fluorescent vest
The trip was a trade mission to try and grow the number of Chinese coming to Victoria as international students.
But Mr Andrews failed to mention that TikTok is now considered a security risk in many Western countries while he was in China.
There are now growing fears that the app, owned by ByteDance, could be used by China to spy on officials in foreign states.
Anthony Albanese signed a federal government ban on TikTok last Tuesday after an assessment of the app’s security risks.
States and territories were also notified and expected to follow suit with similar bans.
That led to Andrews announcing that TikTok would be removed from any phone or computer used by Victorian civil servants and politicians – including his own.
‘I’m afraid I can’t give you all the specific details about when and how [TikTok will be removed]but we’ll deliver the national framework and what you’ll find over a period of time hopefully pretty soon, [is] that platform will not be supported and will not be managed by any Victorian government apparatus,” Andrews said.
He hasn’t posted any new content on his TikTok since March 21, when he posted a clip of the transgender flag being raised following protests in Melbourne involving anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull and neo-Nazis.
Anthony Albanese signed a federal government ban on TikTok last Tuesday after an assessment of the app’s security risks
Mr Andrews is a skilled user of social media to get his messages across and he gained a lot more traction on TikTok than most of his fellow politicians
But despite assurances that his TikTok would be removed, that had not happened as of Monday afternoon.
His account remains visible and has dozens of videos, some of which have hundreds of thousands and even millions of views.
Mr. Andrews is a skilled user of social media to get his messages across and has much more grip on TikTok than most of his fellow politicians.
His most viewed TikTok clip was an encouragement for Years 11 and 12 students to ‘choose nursing’ as a profession in August 2022. It was viewed 4.2 million times.
A movie filmed 120 feet below Melbourne in the massive cavity that will house the city’s new State Library Station has been viewed 2.1 million times.
In December 2019, a provocative clip of a Holden being crushed as part of a message about taking dangerously modified cars off Victoria’s roads was viewed 2.9 million times.
A clip of Mr Andrews agreeing that ‘I think it’s time’ to get down to the beer to celebrate the end of Victoria’s epic Covid lockdown in 2021 was viewed 994,000 times.
On Sunday, Sky News Australia became the first Australian media organization to stop publishing content on TikTok.