TikTok Should be Banned in the U.S., FCC Commissioner Says – By Kirsten Errick (Nextgov) / Nov 2, 2022
The commissioner’s comments are the latest in a long line of concerns about the social media platform’s Chinese ties.
Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr called for the U.S. to entirely ban the social media app TikTok over concerns about how the app and its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, handle U.S. user data.
“I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” Carr said in an interview with Axios.
Carr’s remarks come as the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S. is in the midst of negotiations with TikTok about whether it can continue to operate in the U.S. if ByteDance sells the app to an American company. While the FCC has no authority to directly regulate TikTok, Carr urged CFIUS to implement the ban.
The popular social media app—which has more than 200 million downloads in the United States alone—has drawn widespread concern for its potential threat to national security, due to its ownership by a Chinese company. As Carr pointed out in June 2022, ByteDance is “beholden to the Communist Party of China and required by Chinese law to comply with the PRC’s surveillance demands.” He noted that data collected from TikTok was accessed by ByteDance officials in Beijing, as reported by Buzzfeed earlier that month.
CONTINUE: https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2022/11/tiktok-should-be-banned-us-fcc-commissioner-says/379248/
