Commissioner Brendan Carr of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has called on Apple and Google to drop TikTok from its app stores.
Citing security concerns over the social media platform, which is owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, commissioner Carr shared a letter addressing Google and Apple in a Tweet.
Carr wants Apple and Google to remove TikTok from its platform for its ‘pattern of surreptitious data practices’.
If the companies choose not to do so, Carr has challenged them to provide statements to him explaining their reasoning by 8 July.
Carr referenced reporting by Buzzfeed News in his letter, which claimed leaked audio from internal TikTok meetings showed that sensitive US user data had been repeatedly accessed.
An external auditor hired by TikTok to close off Chinese access to sensitive information, including the likes of Americans’ birth dates, reportedly said: “I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them.”
“TikTok is not what it appears to be on the surface,” Carr concluded in his letter.
He added: “It is not just an app for sharing funny videos or meme. That’s the sheep’s clothing.”
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