FCC Praises TikTok Bans in Foreign Countries
By Movieguide® Contributor
In June of 2020, India banned TikTok after citing “concerns that these apps were engaging in activities that threatened ‘national security and defence of India.’”
Now, U.S. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr saluted this action on the part of India’s government, saying that the U.S. would be wise to follow their lead.
According to an article by Manish Singh for TechCrunch: “TikTok had over 200 million monthly active users in India and counted the South Asian nation as its largest international market by users prior to the ban.”
This is a massive loss to the social media titan “which has amassed over 100 million users” in the US. According to Commissioner Carr, it could lose more business depending upon how the States decide to handle the multiple issues connected to TikTok.
Carr went on to write:
India set an ‘incredibly important precedent’ by banning TikTok two and a half years ago…as he projected a similar fate for the Chinese giant ByteDance app in the U.S….Carr warned that TikTok “operates as a sophisticated surveillance tool” and told the Indian daily Economic Times that banning the social app is a “natural next step in our efforts to secure communication network.” The senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission said he is worried that China could use sensitive and non-public data gleaned from TikTok for “blackmail, espionage, foreign influence campaigns and surveillance.”
“We need to follow India’s lead more broadly to weed out other nefarious apps as well,” he said. Carr’s remarks further illustrate a growing push among U.S. states and lawmakers that are increasingly growing cautious of TikTok.
This comes on the heels of Indiana’s December 2022 allegations and lawsuits against TikTok and its policies.
According to Bloomberg Law reporters, Andrea Vittorio and Skye Witley:
In a pair of first-of-their-kind lawsuits against the social media platform, Indiana Attorney General (R) claimed that TikTok misleads consumers about its age-appropriateness and its protections for shielding US user data on the app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., from access by the Chinese government.
The litigation, filed Dec. 7, is likely to usher in a “pile-on” effect with other attorneys general bringing similar actions in their states, said Fred Cate, a law professor and vice president of research at Indiana University who specializes in information privacy and security law.
In the face of such concerns and their connection to social media apps such as TikTok, it is paramount that Americans today begin asking the question that Shoshana Zuboff raises in her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: “Can the digital future be our home?” (Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, p. 4).
For Christians, the biblical eschaton makes it clear that the answer to this question is “no”. But for anyone concerned about the negative effects of social media, future generations’ free fall into the trap of virtuality, and the national security problems posed by both social media and virtuality, it is time to consider, with FCC Commissioner Carr, whether India’s plan ought or ought not to be that of the US.
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