American FCC commissioner Brendan Carr has asked Apple and Google to boot Chinese social media app TikTok from the App Store and Play Store, respectively. Carr’s request was sent to the CEOs of both companies in a letter with official Federal Communications Commission (FCC) letterhead.
In a series of tweets shared this week, Carr shared the full body of the letter, while accusing TikTok of harvesting “swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.”
In the letter, Carr has said that TikTok parent company ByteDance is liable to have its internal information screened by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing. He cites a media report that shows ByteDance shares everything with the CCP, despite saying earlier that all information collected on American citizens stays in America.
In the letter, Carr has also pointed out that rather than this being just an order from an authority, this new evidence proves TikTok has violated App Store and Play Store policies, and that there is precedent in banning it for this reason.
The letter was dated June 24, and ever since it was published publicly, Carr has repeatedly and vocally advocated for TikTok’s ban on American national media outlets.
