Will they, won’t they? The TikTok question

Traditionally, it’d be the middle of cuffing season rn. But as we know from the past few years, the world is a little upside down. Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen just filed for divorce, Kim K. and Pete Davidson recently broke up, and the US is floating a total ban of TikTok… again.

In an Axios interview published yesterday, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr was quoted as saying, “I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” in reference to the shortform video app.

🤔 What’s he talking about?... To put it simply: many regulators and lawmakers in the US have data security concerns regarding the app. All companies based in China – a box that Bytedance, which owns TikTok, solidly checks – are legally required to render assistance to the government whenever asked, which includes providing info on individuals, customers, and companies.

And while TikTok has maintained that it does not follow this policy, a series of recent reports challenge its assertion.

• At least some TikTok engineers based in China had access to nonpublic US user information, including phone numbers and birthdays, BuzzFeed reported in June.
• And a Forbes report, published earlier this month, details how ByteDance planned to use TikTok to collect information about certain US users.

👀 Looking ahead… To be clear, the FCC has no authority to regulate TikTok directly. But the US government as a whole does.

The shortform video app is currently in negotiations with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, about how – or if – it can continue business in America.