Published , by Morgan Shaver
Published , by Morgan Shaver
In a recent interview with Axios, Federal Communications Commissioner (FCC), Brendan Carr (R), suggested that the U.S. government should ban TikTok. Following this statement, shares of social media companies like Snap and Meta spiked, with Snap up 3.4 percent and Meta up 2.2 percent.
“I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr explained in the Axios interview.
In regards to why he feels this way, Carr points to national security and privacy concerns such as U.S. data “flowing back to China” in addition to the risk of a “state actor using TikTok to covertly influence political processes in the United States.”
“There simply isn’t a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party],” Carr said.
This isn’t the first time Carr has been vocal about his concerns with TikTok as he’d previously sent letters to Apple and Google back in June requesting they remove the TikTok app from their digital stores for the similar reason of concerns regarding “data flowing back to China.”
Following Carr’s suggestion to ban the app, a spokesperson for TikTok reached out to Axios to deliver a statement noting that Commissioner Carr “has no role in the confidential discussions with the U.S. government related to TikTok” before suggesting that Carr “appears to be expressing views independent of his role as an FCC commissioner.”
The spokesperson for TikTok went on to indicate that TikTok “supports the passage of national data privacy legislation” and that it’s confident it’s on a path to “reaching an agreement with the U.S. government that will satisfy all reasonable national security concerns.”
Currently, as reported by outlets like CNBC, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) in the Treasure Department is responsible for reviewing any possible national security issues surrounding TikTok and the app’s owner, Chinese company ByteDance.
For more on this, be sure to read through the Axios interview and CNBC report. To brush up on similar news, check out some of our previous coverage as well including how one-quarter of U.S. adults under 30 get their news from TikTok, and how an Apple VP was asked to step down after making a joke on TikTok about “fondling big-breasted women.”