The rise of TikTok to the top position of social media game was very quick. In September 2021, TikTok reported a whooping 1 billion users as people on average spent 52 minutes in the app every single day. After the stunning rise, almost every other social network and tech company has imitated the content ideas of TikTok. The huge userbase along with the fact that its parent company, ByteDance is based in China, has been firing the alarms at the US government for some time now.
In the past, Trump administration banned TikTok in the US in 2020, only for the issue to vanish under Biden. Now FCC is once again after TikTok and this time they are looking for the complete removal of TikTok from the app stores. FCC’s chairman Brendan Carr has shared a letter in which he addressed the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook and CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai. He said that TikTok is a sophisticated surveillance tool that takes your personal and sensitive data by collecting the search and browsing history, voiceprints, faceprints and your keystroke patterns. Concerns have also been shown about TikTok by both the Democratic and Republican politicians with many congresspeople expressing their concerns and calling TikTok a counterintelligence threat.