A deadline is looming for Apple and Google to respond to FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr on whether they plan to remove TikTok from their app stores.
The commissioner sent a letter to the companies’ CEOs in June, telling the execs that TikTok “presents a serious national security threat” and pointing to a recent BuzzFeed News report that revealed the app’s parent company ByteDance had accessed US user data from within China.
“TikTok should answer one simple question, which is, ‘Can you guarantee that no member of the CCP has accessed or seen non-public US user data?” Carr, a senior Republican at the agency, told Insider in an interview.
Carr asked Apple and Google to respond to him by Friday, July 8 should they decide to keep TikTok in their app stores.
The companies have yet to reply to Carr’s letter and did not respond to Insider’s multiple requests for comment.
But several policy experts told Insider that neither company is likely to kick out the video app any time soon. The FCC doesn’t have jurisdiction over the matter, and Carr’s move to act alone without the involvement of the agency’s three other commissioners signals that his letter doesn’t constitute an official FCC action.
“My guess is that Apple and Alphabet will issue a kind of vague, ‘We understand your concern, but we don’t think it’s appropriate for the FCC to be stepping in at this time’ kind of response,” Aram Sinnreich, chair of the Communication Studies division at American University’s School of Communication, told Insider.
Carr acknowledged that a TikTok ban stemming from his letter is considered unlikely. “I think a lot of people are skeptical that that would happen,” he told Insider, saying the companies could disagree with the premise of his letter or wait to act until other parts of the government with jurisdiction over social media weigh in.
Still, Carr outlined several other paths the tech giants could take if they choose to keep TikTok in their storefronts.
Why Apple and Google are unlikely to act in the short term
One possibility is that Apple and Google execs could recognize Carr’s concerns around TikTok’s data policies, but tell him the app’s actions don’t deserve an outright ban.
“They could say, ‘You’re right. They haven’t been straightforward with their data flows. But we don’t think that rises to the level here of the death penalty,'” Carr told Insider.
The companies could also hold off on taking action until a separate agency, like the Federal Trade Commission, reviews whether TikTok has mishandled US user data, Carr said. Unlike the FCC, the FTC has exercised jurisdiction over TikTok in the past, settling with the company in 2019 after it alleged that its app had illegally collected personal information from children.
Earlier this week, the chair and vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the FTC to investigate whether TikTok had misled the public on its data practices. And nine members of Congress sent a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in June that similarly raised questions about access to TikTok’s US user data in China.
Chew replied to the senators’ questions on June 30, writing, “we have not provided US user data to the CCP, nor would we if asked.”
A TikTok spokesperson also said in response: “For two years, we’ve talked openly about our work to limit access to user data across regions, and in our letter to senators last week we were clear about our progress in limiting access even further through our work with Oracle.”
But Apple and Google may also be weighing whether kicking out TikTok could damage the companies’ own business interests when it comes to China, Carr said.
“Both Google and Apple have deep supply-chain ties back into China,” he said. “Potential retribution from China with respect to those supply chains if they take action against TikTok, I’m assuming, is maybe something that Google and Apple are thinking about.”
However, Google’s business could also potentially benefit from boxing out TikTok. The Alphabet-owned company owns YouTube, a social entertainment platform that competes with TikTok for ad dollars.
Carr said it didn’t matter to him whether a TikTok ban could indirectly benefit or hurt the app’s competitors.
“I don’t care whether this action on TikTok that I think should be taken ends up being to Google or Apple’s benefit, financial or not,” Carr said. “I think it’s required as a national security matter.”
