The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is keeping a close eye on TikTok, a well-known app for sharing videos.
The US has ordered that Google and Apple’s app shops remove the Chinese software. The protracted conflict between the American government and TikTok began under Donald Trump’s presidency.
Trump had ordered TikTok to either be removed or sell its US operation to an American investor or buyer. The current president’s administration, led by Joe Biden, has also criticized the video-sharing app.
While Trump’s September 2020 ban on TikTok resulted to a lawsuit being brought by ByteDance, the parent business of the video-sharing app, Biden has opted for tighter governmental monitoring of the company’s operations.
TikTok has also encountered difficulties in India, where it was permanently outlawed in January 2021 along with more than 50 other Chinese apps. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.
There are one billion TikTok users globally, according to research. 57% of TikTok users are female and 43.7 percent are between the ages of 18 and 24. There are 226.8 million TikTok users in Southeast Asia, which accounts for the majority of them.
On June 24, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote letters to Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook, the CEOs of Google and Apple, accusing them of capturing large amounts of private information that is being accessible in Beijing, China.
Carr wrote: “As you know, TikTok is an app that millions of Americans can download from your app stores, and it gathers enormous amounts of private information about those US consumers.
ByteDance, a company established in Beijing that is subordinate to the Communist Party of China and is mandated by Chinese law to abide by PRC monitoring demands, is the company that owns TikTok.
Due of its enormous data collection and Beijing’s unrestricted access to such sensitive material, TikTok obviously poses an intolerable national security danger.
I’m writing to the two of you because Apple and Google present their app stores as trustworthy and secure locations to find and download programs. Nevertheless, the TikTok app has been examined and given the all-clear to be added to Apple and Google’s respective app stores. According to data, TikTok was downloaded about 19 million times from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the first quarter of this year alone.
Due to TikTok’s enormous data collection and Beijing’s unrestricted access to that material, it is evident that it poses an intolerable national security danger. Therefore, I am demanding that you treat TikTok in accordance with the plain text of your app store policies and delist it as a result of its violation of those terms.
