Texas brings the ban hammer down on DeepSeek and RedNote

DeepSeek's censorial behavior mirrors that of the Great Firewall on China's internet. Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends

If you’re a government worker in Texas, you can’t use DeepSeek or many other Chinese-developed applications on your state-issued device. Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, has instated a ban, preventing state employees from downloading, installing, or using several notable Chinese apps on government-sanctioned devices.

Sighting data privacy and national security concerns, the Governor decreed that state workers are prohibited from interacting with Chinese AI and social media apps including DeepSeek, RedNote, and Lemon8 on state-owned devices. Additionally, the ban includes Chinese stock-trading platforms such as Moomoo, Tiger Brokers, and Webull.

“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,” Governor Abbott said in a proclamation on the Texas state website.

The ban comes as several Chinese apps become more popularized in the U.S. and globally. The open-source AI chatbot DeepSeek has become the top competition for similar brands in the West. At the same time, the app’s legality and data collection protocol was quickly brought into question. Notably, Texas is the first state in the U.S. to ban DeepSeek. The U.S. Navy, Congress, the Pentagon, the Finance Ministry, and NASA have also banned the use of the AI app, all similarly sighting privacy and security concerns.

Several countries have also moved swiftly to ban DeepSeek. Italy was first, with the app disappearing from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store not long after being questioned by the Italian data watchdog group, the Garante, according to Android Headlines.

Taiwan and Australia have also restricted the app from being used in their countries. Some other countries are currently weighing the risks of keeping DeepSeek legal for use, including Ireland, some EU members, the UK, and South Korea.

Texas was also ahead of the game in banning TikTok on state-sanctioned devices in 2022. Since then thirty states put similar TikTok bans in place for government workers, ahead of the federal ban in mid-January, which saw millions of U.S. users take to the Chinese app, RedNote. However, interest in the app has waned after access to TikTok was quickly reinstated.