Why This FCC Commissioner Says Apple And Google App Stores Should Remove TikTok

The demand is staggering considering TikTok’s popularity and economic potential, but the U.S. won’t be the first country to attempt a TikTok ban. India, one of TikTok’s largest and fastest-growing markets, banned the app over national security concerns. Carr’s letter demanding the same comes in the wake of a bombshell BuzzFeed News report claiming the data of users in the U.S. was accessed in China. Interestingly, TikTok announced on the same day that it was moving U.S. users’ data to Oracle servers.

Citing audio clips leaked from more than 80 internal meetings that took place in China, TikTok employees reportedly admitted that the company’s engineers had unhindered access to data on American users for nearly half a year between September 2021 and January 2022. TikTok, on the other hand, has repeatedly claimed that no user data is accessed by any party beyond the regional boundaries.

Carr highlighted multiple worrying findings from the past few years, accusing the app of surreptitious data harvesting and user tracking practices that were in strict violation of policies. Despite TikTok joining hands with Oracle to store the data of its U.S.-based users on servers located on American soil, Carr claims that the move doesn’t address the concerns raised by him. It would be interesting to see whether Carr’s demand and the BuzzFeed investigation snowball into a bigger headache for TikTok in 2022, which could again renew the campaign for a TikTok ban.