A commissioner with the U.S. communications regulator is asking Apple and Google to consider banning TikTok from their app stores over data security concerns related to the Chinese-owned company.
Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has written a letter to the CEOs of both companies, alerting them that the wildly popular video-sharing app does not comply with the requirements of their app store policies.
I wonder just how big the outcry will be among TikTok users if they did this. TikTok is incredibly popular – far more so than people my age even realise – so it certainly wouldn’t go down unnoticed.
This will be an interesting event to see interactions between 1st party and 3rd party app stores, side-loading, web apps, and online services.
Whichever way it goes, it will be educational to watch.
I have the same concerns related to US-based companies, and to Chinese-based ones. “The pot calling the kettle black”, as far as I am concerned…
the difference is whom holds the data. Do you equate the US with a communist totalitarian state (or fascist, as the state controls much of the economy now through regulation, instead of direct ownership). Even if the US has a false choise democracy, it still punishes politicians by voting them out. In china only the communist CCP party can oust a politician, and sometimes not even that is enough. Jiang Zemin and Xi Jinping is in an seemingly eternal battle over the control of china. Do not get me wrong, they are both totalitarians of the same wing of the same (and only properly allowed) party.
Regardless of Xi or Jiang wins the power struggle in the end, the murder of the uhigurs, the oppression of the non-han will continue, the opression of hong-kong and macau will be the same and the threats against taiwan will be the same.
The title is “US communications regulator wants TikTok removed from app stores over spying concerns”. For me, in that regard, US or China, all the same… I have not mentioned anything about politics.
(Reply to NaGERST)
Less of a problem to me if CCP has my data than if American companies do.
I don’t live in either country, but the former has no appreciable impact on my life while the latter impacts the world around me substantially.
It will be interesting to see if operating systems and hardware device drivers from China. Once they start gaining substantial market share. If it will be mandatory for them to be open source. Lets say in western countries and when doing business with public sector. In addition it will be interesting to see if companies such as Google will lose business. Due to their refusal to provide hardware with open source device drivers. This for sure will be something to keep an eye on in the future. My prediction is blobs are on the way out and companies that won’t adapt to this new reality soon enough will have difficulties. As you can’t transform over night. It’s more like an decade of effort involved.
How about a compromise: TikTok gets kicked out of the App Store (US demand), but Apple will allow “sideloading” (EU demand).
Regardless of TikTok development Apple will sooner rather than letter allow normal installation of applications. Not just in EU region. Like with USB-C where now it looks like Brazil will join the bandwagon.
Seems fair
TikTok will get banned, there will a moment of outcry, then the content creators, that make it a microeconomy, will move to a new platform and users will follow. Twitter and Facebook/Meta will be clambering over themselves to convert the users. Almost certainly paying the content creators to “choose” them.
People will forget Ticktok, remembering it as a pub quiz question, like MySpace being the platform that launched Lilly Allan.
That.