Texas bans DeepSeek, RedNote, Lemon8 & more from government devices

Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, has banned using several Chinese apps from use on state-issued devices amid data privacy and national security concerns. The latest ban prevents Texas government employees from downloading, installing, or using some popular Chinese apps like DeepSeek, RedNote, Lemon8, and more.

Texas bans DeepSeek, RedNote, Lemon 8, and other Chinese apps from government devices

Besides DeepSeek, RedNote, and Lemon8, Texas also bans some popular Chinese stock-trading apps from state-owned devices. It includes Moomoo, Tiger Brokers, and Webull. Talking about the ban, Abbott told the AP News that “Texas will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate our state’s critical infrastructure through data-harvesting AI and social media apps. Texas will continue to protect and defend our state from hostile foreign actors.”

Speaking of Chinese apps, TikTok has been banned on state-owned devices in Texas since 2022. Following that, thirty states in the US have implemented a similar ban, blocking TikTok from government devices. Texas has also become the first state to ban DeepSeek, which took the AI industry by storm by releasing the new R1 reasoning model.

However, the good days didn’t last long, as experts have also warned that the app could pose a huge risk to national security. Reports from late last month also claimed that the DeepSeek AI chatbot doesn’t respond to sensitive topics from China, hinting that the app might have been highly censored.

The Chinese apps, especially DeepSeek, collect way too much user data

If you take a closer look at the data collection policy of DeepSeek, you’ll know why everyone seems worried. The company is collecting every kind of data from users when they access the Chinese AI chatbot. Apart from Texas, the US Navy also recently banned the use of DeepSeek’s AI chatbot due to similar concerns.

Per the ban, shipmates and all other Navy members shouldn’t download, install, or use the AI chatbot in any capacity. Authorities from around the world have started questioning DeepSeek about how it handles user data. More recently, the Italian data watchdog, the Garante, questioned the makers of DeepSeek about their data handling policies.

A day after Italian authority summoned DeepSeek, the app vanished from the Italian App Store and Google Play Store. While Texas is the first state to ban DeepSeek and others, soon we might see other states taking similar measures.

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