The Real Reason Behind Texas’ Latest App Bans

The entire nation went into a near-panic when TikTok was shut down briefly. The popular platform has bred several stars from Texas who rely on the app for their income by making all sorts of different content.

When the ban took effect, a lot of content creators from Texas and other places began looking for another place to put their content...then those apps started getting banned.

Texas is not playing around when it comes to these apps, and Gov. Abbott has now added six more apps to the banned list in Texas.

DeepSeek, Lemon8, Moomoo, RedNote, Tiger Brokers and Webull have all recently been added to the list of apps, and it has people wondering just how far these app bans are going to go.

Now, to clarify, it's not that we can't use these apps in Texas. State employees and contractors are not allowed to download these apps or use them, along with TikTok and other banned apps, to their state-owned AND personal devices.

Yes, personal devices. Gov. Abbott stated:

“To achieve that mission, I ordered Texas state agencies to ban Chinese government-based AI and social media apps from all state-issued devices. State agencies and employees responsible for handling critical infrastructure, intellectual property, and personal information must be protected from malicious espionage operations by the Chinese Communist Party. Texas will continue to protect and defend our state from hostile foreign actors.”

This is a tricky thing as the world moves to more AI being utilized in daily tasks and functions, and if the technology is based out of China, it appears it'll be banned almost upon impact.

The concern is that this ban will ultimately extend to everyone with the apps being unusable in the state for regular citizens who have nothing to do with the state other than living in it. There hasn't been anything mentioned about it as of yet, but the concern is there.

A bigger question would be is this something that goes against our basic rights as Americans and our freedoms? Stay tuned, this promises to get more interesting.