Advertisement

TikTok Imperils U.S. Business

As someone who covered the TikTok saga during the  waning days of the Trump presidency, I must confess I did have some degree of skepticism with the belief by the former president and his people that a short-video app popular with teenagers was actually a stealth tool used by the Communist ­Chinese to spy on Americans.

No longer.

Brendan Carr, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, hit me with some revelations that appear to confirm the worst fears of Trump and his national security team about the app and how it’s being used by China to gather data on American citizens to spy on us.

In 2020, Trump wanted to ban TikTok, so of course President Biden reversed course. But if Sleepy Joe cares about the Chinese threat to our national security, he should put aside his Trump animus and listen to what Carr has to say about the possible dangers posed by something that could be sucking the social media life out of ­unsuspecting people for nefarious purposes.

Again, I was a skeptic. What could the Chinese do with information gleaned from dance videos and comedy sketches? The first point Carr made to me is that TikTok isn’t just an ordinary app — it’s the most popular in the world; the TikTok logo has become omnipresent at American sporting events, from Yankees games to MSG during Stanley Cup playoffs.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr warned about China using TikTok as a way to gain Americans’ information.Getty ImagesWith 1 billion active monthly ­users, it collects a lot of data. Like all of our “free” social media platforms, TikTok siphons swaths of information from users to make money, which is why I get so many online targeted ads based on my search history.

Carr, appointed by Trump to the FCC, lays out a pretty compelling case that unlike US big tech firms, profits aren’t the only motivating factor in TikTok’s busines …

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

U.S. National Debt

The current U.S. national debt:
$34,573,199,545,841
Send this to a friend