Last month, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr posted an open letter on his Twitter account directed at the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, and the CEO of Alphabet Inc. and Google, Sundar Pichai.
Brendan Carr’s open letter expressed concerns over alleged data gathering by the Communist Party of China via the Bytedance-operated application TikTok.
TikTok is not just another video app.
That’s the sheep’s clothing.It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.
I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn
— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022
The letter requests Apple and Google Play storefronts remove the popular AR marketing platform from their distribution channels, with the developments following the footsteps of the Indian government who banned the service in 2020 alongside 59 China-operated smartphone services such as WeChat.
A “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”
Carr’s letter cites various studies that accuse the social media service of being a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” with accusations criticising the firm’s data farming. Carr notes that TikTok circumnavigated privacy safeguards in Google’s Android operating system in 2020 to track users’ online data.
In the same year, he claimed that researchers found evidence to suggest TikTok’s iOS application was tracking sensitive user data, including private messages, passwords, and cryptocurrency wallet information.
Additionally, in 2021, the commissioner’s report says that the social media giant paid roughly $92 million to settle lawsuits, accusing TikTok of sending “vast quantities of private and personally identifiable user data and content” such as information to identify, profile, and track the physical and digital location of US users to servers in China.
Carr also reports US government institutions that banned Bytedance’s social media service in the Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), among others.
Banning TikTok, What does it Mean for XR?
Brandon’s concern comes amid Bytedance’s attempts to build an extended global reality (XR) ecosystem using partner Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor ecosystem.
Bytedance announced a significant partnership with the wireless communications component firm at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
During the event, it revealed it would incorporate its Pico range of XR hardware into Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces platform to encourage the production of immersive content for Pico devices.
Bytedance also addresses ethical concerns through its Effect House, a new TikTok feature for creating AR content. According to Bytedance, the feature considers a safe and inclusive online environment.
The Bytedance Trust and Safety team requires all submitted AR effects to pass its community guidelines, ensuring user safety and improving the quality of user-made AR content.
