He’s a 10, but he harvests your data

Brendan Carr, one of the FCC’s five commissioners, shared a letter on Tuesday that he wrote to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai requesting TikTok be removed from their app stores. The short-form video app has an estimated 80 million US users, 60% of which are between the ages of 16–24.

🚫💃📱 Driving the move… National security concerns. In the letter, the Trump-appointed Carr described TikTok’s funny videos as “sheep’s clothing” for a “sophisticated surveillance tool that harvests extensive amounts of personal and sensitive data” that can be accessed by the Chinese government (the app is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company).

• He referenced a Buzzfeed report from earlier this month, which provided evidence of TikTok engineers in China having access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022. Per leaked audio from a TikTok official: “Everything is seen in China.”

🤔 So, what’s next?... If they refuse to comply with the request, Apple and Alphabet have to report back to Carr by July 8 (next Friday) with an explanation as to why.

✋ Yes, but: As just a single member of the FCC, Carr has no power to compel action by either company. And as both the WSJ and Bloomberg ($) note, the FCC has generally steered clear of regulating apps, though it does have broad jurisdiction over communications.

🇮🇳 Zoom out: TikTok has been banned in India over similar concerns since 2020.