The FCC Commissioner, Brendan Carr, has published an open letter addressing both Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app store.
This has come out as the platform has been shunned for a “pattern of surreptitious data practices,” especially in relation to how they share data with their Chinese parent company.
The short-form video platform is operated by ByteDance, a Chinese company with ties to the Chinese government.
Is TikTok tracking users?
This all began in 2020, when TikTok users realized that the platform was tracking their Clipboard content, as the new iOS notifiers indicating that TikTok was accessing the Clipboard every few seconds.
Officials of the platform stated that it would deactivate this feature from the app, however, the fact that TikTok was deceptively trying to gain user data raised fears that it was easily able to gain private information from its account holders.
In Brendan Carr’s letter, he supports this claim by stating:
“TikTok is not what it appears to be on the surface. It’s not just an app for sharing funny videos or memes. That’s the sheep’s clothing. At its core, TikTok functions as a sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data.”
Read the full letter below.
He goes on to mentioned that “It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data.”
The main consensus of the letter is Carr requesting Google and Apple to remove the ability to use the app on their phones.
If they refuse to do so by July 8th, he’s expecting a response from both companies.
Carr explains this by saying – “the basis for your company’s conclusion that the surreptitious access of private and sensitive U.S. user data by persons located in Beijing, coupled with TikTok’s pattern of misleading representations and conduct, does not run afoul of any of your app store policies.”
This is definetely not the first time the US has tried to ban the video sharing platform. Former President, Donald Trump also attempted to cut ties and ban the platform via an executive order.
Despite these concerns, many TikTok’ers and influencers are standing their ground and expressing how the platform has been a positive influence in their lives and careers.
One user, Danielle Ryan, said in a statement to CBC News, “I started TikTok almost two years ago now, just as a joke really, then it very quickly escalated into something a lot bigger, and now it’s part of my livelihood,”.
Currently, it is estimated that over 80 million active users each month of the app are from the US, which is a large number for them to lose.
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