Last week FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr made headlines by sending a letter to Apple and Google demanding they ban TikTok. Journalists couldn’t be bothered to mention the FCC has no authority over app stores or social media, the letter had no legal backing, or that Carr (a captured regulator largely loyal to AT&T) has no credibility on consumer privacy issues and was largely just publicity hunting.
“The FCC wants to ban TikTok because it’s a spying tool of the Chinese government” was the implication in a news cycle that’s now lasted more than a week. The Federalist belatedly joined the fray with a story also calling for an outright ban of the app (I’m quoting but not linking because it’s a garbage disinformation mill that doesn’t deserve Techdirt reader clicks, but is representative of thinking on this front).
The piece and Carr highlight the numerous times TikTok has played fast and loose with U.S. consumer data, then proceed to claim TikTok should be banned because it’s a bad actor on privacy:
Given all these concerns about TikTok, Carr’s request of Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores is reasonable and not unprecedented. In 2020, India banned more than 100 Chinese apps, including TikTok, claiming these Chinese apps were “stealing and surreptitiously transmitting user data in an unauthorized manner.”
The Federalist weirdly fails to mention that Google and Apple don’t technically have to respond because there’s no legal basis for Carr’s request. It also fails to mention Carr and the FCC don’t regulate app stores or social media. And it fails to mention this stuff because this is all just a dumb performance that has nothing to do with actually protecting consumer privacy.
Recall, Carr is a guy who spent years arguing on behalf of AT&T that the FCC had no authority to police bad behavior by telecom giants (it does). He’s now arguing the FCC has the authority to tell Apple, Google, and TikTok want to do (it doesn’t). If you’ve tracked Carr’s trajectory from crying about FCC overreach on net neutrality to his actual overreach here, the inconsistency is stunning.
One thing Carr and the Federalist don’t understand (because it would require some functional introspection), is that TikTok’s privacy abuses are a byproduct of Carr and his friends’ own shitty policy positions on privacy rules, guidelines, and reform.
In perfect lockstep with the GOP, Carr has repeatedly opposed any meaningful privacy oversight of industry, whether it’s abuses in adtech, telecom, data brokerage, media, or the internet of things. He (and the GOP) demolished FCC broadband privacy rules. They oppose even a basic federal privacy law. From start to finish, they’ve supported the zero accountability snoopvertising free-for-all TikTok now exploits.
The end result has been just a parade of scandals where companies over-collect data, fail to secure that data from hackers, or sell that data to any nitwit with a nickel. And face little more than a light wrist slap, if that. Most politicians have done absolutely nothing about any of this because the dysfunction (much like the broadband monopolies Carr also ignores) is hugely profitable.
As a result, what TikTok does isn’t unique. There’s just an absolute avalanche of services and apps, foreign and domestic, collecting and monetizing your every movement and brain fart, from your electric meter and smartphone to your cloud-based router and diet app. Singling out on China and TikTok exclusively indicates to me you generally don’t understand how any of this works.
We’ve built a giant, unaccountable, data hoovering mess. All overseen by politicians and regulators like Carr, who don’t believe in real oversight. Sure, Carr occasionally shows up to hyperventilate on US consumer privacy, but only when China’s involved. He’s utterly absent on broader privacy issues, especially in the sector he actually regulates (telecom).
He’s been a no show on the widespread abuse of location data, and he’s had nothing to say about the potential access and abuse of that data by randos in the wake of the unpopular GOP demolition of Roe. In fact I’d wonder if this latest hyperventilation about TikTok isn’t also an attempt to distract from that policy dysfunction.
Here’s the thing: you could smash TikTok into a million pieces today with your giant patriotic hammer, and Chinese intelligence could immediately turn right around and buy (and abuse) just an endless parade of US consumer data from no limit of other companies. And they can do that because regulators and lawmakers like Carr have actively supported an accountability-optional data free-for-all.
During its tenure, the Trump administration made it repeatedly clear it couldn’t care less about widespread privacy abuses, both foreign and domestic. They were singularly focused on creating moral panics about TikTok not because they care about privacy (or even Chinese spying), but because they wanted to offload a hugely successful overseas company to their friends at Walmart and Oracle.
The Federalist again proposes “fixing” the problem by offloading TikTok to a U.S. company:
Apple and Google should comply with Carr’s request and remove TikTok from their app store immediately. As for the Biden administration, rather than courting TikTok influencers, it should make ByteDance divest TikTok’s U.S. operation to an American company right away. If ByteDance refuses, the administration must ban TikTok from operating in the U.S.
Yeah, TikTok and its potential tethers to the Chinese government pose a privacy risk. But it’s not a particularly unique threat in an environment where widespread, international overcollection and abuse of user data is the norm. If you’re not fighting for reform on the latter, you’re not really helping the former.
If you actually wanted to protect U.S. consumer privacy, you’d take aim at the broader environment that makes TikTok consumer data abuse so easy in the first place. You’d advocate for stricter guidelines and oversight as it pertains to data collection and monetization across numerous offender industries. That way you’d have greater protections against the exploitation of user data, be it by TikTok or anybody else.
Instead, the goal here is largely about creating moral panics about the Chinese, putting a political hopeful’s name in lights, and creating alt-reality partisan fanfiction fodder for the base:
Also, keep in mind Facebook was just busted using a right-wing PR firm to smear TikTok in the press, so again, a lot of what’s motivating some of these folks isn’t genuine consumer privacy protection, it’s just dumb old cronyism. Not to mention that one of Targeted Victory’s top execs… used to work at the FCC. So, this whole thing again appears to be manufactured nonsense.
On the plus side, it’s not hard to single out bad faith folks on the privacy front. They’re usually fairly obvious because while they’ll suffer an absolute embolism about China and/or TikTok, they’ll be complete and total no shows on any effort for broader privacy reform or accountability.
Filed Under: brendan carr, data, fcc, privacy, social media Companies: tiktok
I don’t want China tracking me slightly more than I don’t want anyone else tracking me. But as long as China can just buy or steal the tracking data I don’t see an option. China mostly wants to spy on their expats and fuck with them if they are falungoning tienanmens. But if I ever became a threat to China I wouldn’t put it past them to fuck with me too, even faster than the USG would.
But as long as China can just buy or steal the tracking data I don’t see an option.
A good first step is, when considering today’s social media applications, and website registrations, is to emulate Bartleby the scrivener:
I prefer not, to showing my shopping preferences by logging in to every website. I prefer not, to buying things online, or with credit/debit cards. I prefer not, to wandering around with a tracking device in my pocket, in the name of being always-available to people who might call me.
There are always choices, and always costs to those choices. You may get called a luddite. You may be called paranoid. But … what would you prefer?
Not for everyone. Fuck off, troll.
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In your desperation to hate on anything Trump (which… I can understand) you seem to have missed the actual danger that apps like TikTok present to the digital world. It should be banned in the US because it is a spying tool of the Chinese government.
This anti-chickenlittle “they were also bad” trash article does absolutely nothing to assuage the real-world concerns with privacy and data related to TikTok.
How do you even write this garbage? Do you know anything about digital security at all? This blogger is a bad joke.
[…]you seem to have missed the actual danger that apps like TikTok present to the digital world. It should be banned in the US because it is a spying tool of the Chinese government.
Speaking of missing, did you miss this bit?
Here’s the thing: you could smash TikTok into a million pieces today with your giant patriotic hammer, and Chinese intelligence could immediately turn right around and buy (and abuse) just an endless parade of US consumer data from no limit of other companies. And they can do that because regulators and lawmakers like Carr have actively supported an accountability-optional data free-for-all.
[TikTok] should be banned in the US because it is a spying tool of the Chinese government.
Good luck getting surviving a first amendment test.
Do you get paid in Yuan or US dollars?
It should be banned in the US because it is a spying tool of the Chinese government.
I’m having a hard time being outraged at the potential for the Chinese government to find useful information in that giant sea of self-centered stupidity.
I’d be wary of the value of ‘intelligence’ through videos of teenagers choking themselves out, somebody’s cellulite twerking, or whatever other stupid human trick of the day everyone’s losing their shit over.
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In your desperation to hate on anything Trump (which… I can understand) you seem to have missed the actual danger that apps like TikTok present to the digital world. It should be banned in the US because it is a spying tool of the Chinese government.
This anti-chickenlittle “they were also bad” trash does absolutely nothing to assuage the real-world concerns with privacy and data related to TikTok.
How do you even write this? Do you know anything about digital security at all? This blogger is a bad joke.
You are a double posting sycophant, who has been taken in by slogans while ignoring that the real objective was to make America great by transferring even more wealth to the 1%. Th only Interest Trump had in the average citizen was in how much the would donate to his scams.
Is it a fair assumption that the real reason these conservatives are upset is that TikTok is the first social media platform to hit mainstream success globally that was not made in the USA? That blow to American exceptionalism is really grating on them.
If you’ve tracked Carr’s trajectory from crying about FCC overreach on net neutrality to his actual overreach here, the inconsistency is stunning.
I think the adjective you were looking for is ‘hypocrisy’.
No, “hypocrite” is a noun. “Hypocrisy” is an adjective.
“Hypocrisy” and “hypocrite” are both nouns. “Hypocritical” is the adjective form.
Hypocrisy Could be a verb.
Hypocrisy Could be a verb.
i assume the same proof of what TikTok is doing, ie, spying for the Chinese Govt, is the same as the proof that Huawei was doing the same. there isn’t and never has been any proof shown at all and this was dopey Trump doing what he did best, lie like a cow in shit and ensure a USA company, that was half as good as the Chinese ones, continued to make the bosses richer and the customers screwed over time and time and time again with piss poor products that WERE being used to spy on people!
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It is an amazingly defeatist attitude to justify the continuing violations of a foreign spy service. The Russians put in the work prior to the Ukraine war in order to eliminate their reliance on western communication internet services. America can certainly do it too. However, we need to start now, or else the disconnect will take longer and will be more painful later.
Anything ‘the west’ replaces ‘western communication internet services’ with would, inherently, be ‘Western communication internet services’.
Mike has repeatedly argued for legislation that addresses the core threats that underpin the surveillance by ‘western communication internet services’ as an alternative to knee-jerk bespoke responses to the limited threat profiles of specific companies or devices.
It is not defeatist to note that Carr’s focus on tik tok hypotheticals ignores that he has repeatedly supported a legal regime that undermines any benefit of the proposed solution. If mike ended things there, claiming there was nothin gthat could be done, it would be defeatist. But Mike proposes solutions that also would give Carr (or a different regulator depending on the exact mechanism) the power to get rid of tik tok in a way that meaningfully affects China’s ability to surveil Americans.
Is Russia really who we want to model our economy on?
I’d say his paymasters but we all know he’s too fucking stupid to get paid to be a shill.
There is no difference between a whore and a prostitute. The former word is just a different term for the latter. The actual difference, therefore, is between a slut and a prostitute.
Maybe all these grandstanding political dipshits are upset about TikTok because it proved how the Gentleminions dress better than them.
And behave just the same.
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Now Techdirt is shilling for China; and in typical Chinese fashion, engaging in a healthy dose of whataboutism. In other words, business as usual.
[AC Hallucinates facts not in evidence. Business as usual for the anonymous troll.]
Techdirt argues that a solution should have meaningful impact on the problem it addresses. Carr is unconcerned with the general surveillance state and his solutions therefore fail to address the issue of Chinese surveillance in a meaningful way.
And somehow fing TikTok is a primary focus…
And somehow fing TikTok is a primary focus…
Not that Carr is on the right track here, but what would you expect the FCC to do about the corpses?
It’s telling how user privacy and data collection and sale only seems to be a big deal when it comes to certain companies even as others are given pass after pass, almost as though the whole thing is just a dishonest and hypocritical series of PR stunts meant to rile people up and/or punish companies that certain groups don’t like…
…because it’s a spying tool of the Chinese government
Well, it probably is. So what. If you use it, you accept that aspect. If you don’t use it, it doesn’t matter. At least with Tiki Torch you know what you’re getting into up front from all the coverage.
I like Tiktok a lot more as it does not take up much storage but still has the same features of the twin app. https://downloader2x.com/en/
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