Federal employees can download TikTok on their work phones again

The US Department of Justice has reversed a years-old policy barring federal employees from installing TikTok on government-issued devices, with the change approved by President Donald Trump following the completion of a deal that shifted ownership of TikTok's US operations to a new joint venture.

The deal behind the reversal

Under the restructuring, TikTok's US business is now controlled by a joint venture backed by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, with Oracle serving specifically as the platform's security partner — the entity responsible for overseeing how American user data is stored and protected. TikTok's original Chinese parent company, ByteDance, retained a minority 19.9% stake in the new structure, a sharply reduced position compared to its previous full ownership.

A policy that had been in place since 2022

Federal employees had been barred from using TikTok on official devices since 2022, part of a broader wave of US government restrictions driven by national security concerns about the app's Chinese ownership and the data access that ownership structure implied. Those concerns escalated further in early 2025, when TikTok faced a nationwide ban in the US; the app went dark only briefly before Trump moved to delay enforcement of that ban, buying time for the ownership restructuring that has now been completed.

What the new policy actually says

A DOJ memo formalizing the change states that Trump has cleared "employees of Executive Branch agencies" to "download TikTok onto their official devices, subject to the agency's discretion and consistent with all applicable workplace policies." That caveat matters: individual agencies retain the ability to maintain their own, stricter restrictions if they choose, meaning the policy change removes a blanket federal prohibition rather than mandating that every agency allow the app.

A notable reversal in approach

The shift marks a significant turn in the administration's overall posture toward TikTok, moving from active enforcement of restrictions and threatened bans toward a more permissive stance now that the ownership structure has been changed to address the underlying national security concerns officials had cited. Whether individual federal agencies choose to exercise the discretion the new policy grants them, or continue enforcing their own internal bans regardless of the DOJ's reversal, will likely vary agency by agency in the months ahead.

A restructured company, a changed security calculus

The core argument underpinning the original 2022 ban was that ByteDance's ownership gave the Chinese government a potential avenue to access American user data or influence content shown to US audiences. With Oracle now serving as the designated security partner overseeing US data handling and ByteDance's stake reduced to a minority 19.9%, the administration's position is that the specific national security concern the ban was designed to address has been substantially mitigated by the ownership restructuring itself, even though the app's underlying algorithm and core functionality remain largely unchanged from a user's perspective. Critics of the reversal may still question whether a minority ownership stake and a security-partner arrangement fully eliminate the influence concerns that prompted the original restrictions, a debate likely to continue even as individual federal employees begin reinstalling the app.

For agencies that continue to maintain their own stricter internal rules despite the DOJ's blanket reversal, the discretion built into the policy means the practical effect for many federal workers may be smaller than the headline change suggests, particularly at agencies handling classified or sensitive material where device restrictions typically go well beyond what any single app-specific policy addresses.