A member of the Federal Communications Fee has requested Google and Apple to take away TikTok from their app shops, citing considerations that the favored Chinese language-owned video app may ship American knowledge again to Beijing.
In a letter to the businesses launched on Tuesday, Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner, mentioned he believed that “TikTok’s sample of conduct and misrepresentations concerning the unfettered entry that individuals in Beijing need to delicate U.S. consumer knowledge” violated Apple’s and Google’s requirements and that TikTok needs to be taken out of the app shops.
Mr. Carr’s request is unlikely to realize traction as a result of the F.C.C. doesn’t regulate the app shops and the fee’s agenda is essentially set by its Democratic chairwoman. Nevertheless it reveals the sustained strain on Chinese language tech corporations from officers in Washington.
Policymakers have lengthy fearful that TikTok’s Chinese language dad or mum firm, ByteDance, may expose its knowledge to the Chinese language authorities. Former President Donald J. Trump tried to pressure ByteDance to promote the app or face expulsion from app shops in 2020. At one level, the Trump administration introduced a deal wherein Oracle, the American cloud computing firm, would have taken over among the firm. The sale by no means got here to fruition.
The Biden administration has thought of different measures to maintain American knowledge away from China however has not publicly pushed TikTok to chop ties with its Chinese language proprietor.
TikTok has maintained that it’s taking steps to maintain workers in China from having access to its knowledge. Shortly earlier than a latest information report revealed it was struggling to take action, it mentioned it was routing all knowledge from its U.S. customers by means of servers managed by Oracle.
Brooke Oberwetter, a spokeswoman for TikTok, mentioned the corporate was partaking with lawmakers who had requested questions on its knowledge practices. Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesman, declined to remark. Apple and the F.C.C. didn’t reply to requests for remark.
In his letter, Mr. Carr mentioned he didn’t consider TikTok’s efforts would make a distinction.
“TikTok has lengthy claimed that its U.S. consumer knowledge has been saved on servers within the U.S., and but these representations supplied no safety towards the info being accessed from Beijing,” he wrote. “Certainly, TikTok’s assertion that ‘one hundred pc of US consumer site visitors is being routed to Oracle’ says nothing about the place that knowledge will be accessed from.”
