‘This is Digital Fentanyl’: FCC Commissioner Calls For Ban of TikTok on Fox News

Fox News’s Dana Perino spoke with a Federal Communications Commissioner on Friday about the dangers of TikTok and the possibly that the Chinese-owned app could be banned in upcoming weeks.

Perino welcomed FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to America’s Newsroom and asked, “So we had Mike Gallagher, a congressman from Wisconsin, on a little bit ago and he and Senator Marco Rubio yesterday — I believe they, I read it yesterday, have introduced legislation, or will be, to ban TikTok. You agree? Why do you think we should ban TikTok?”

“Yeah, I think it’s a very smart move. At the end of the day, TikTok is China’s digital fentanyl. A lot of people look at Tik Tok and think it’s just a fun application for sharing dance videos or other funny videos. But that’s just the sheep’s clothing, underneath of it, it operates as a very sophisticated surveillance app,” Carr replied, adding:

It’s not the videos, but it’s pulling everything from search and browsing history, potentially keystroke patterns, biometrics, including face prints, and voice prints. And up to now, we’ve been told by Tik Tok officials, don’t worry, all this is stored in the U.S. or stored outside of China.

But this summer, there was a blockbuster story that said internal communications from TikTok show that everything is seen back in China. And that’s a big risk for, you know, four or five different reasons, including espionage and other activity. And really, every week there’s a new shoe that drops in this story. There’s another report that officials in Bytedance, the parent in Beijing, are attempting to surveil the location of specific Americans through this application. So there’s real serious dangers here.

“So in that 60 Minutes clip, you saw that China only allows people to be on TikTok for 40 minutes a day. So I recently read in The Washington Post that some people, mostly younger girls, women, teenagers, are on the TikTok app for over 8 hours a day. And I just wonder, how then do you ban it if, as my friend says, the world is run by teenage girls?” followed up Perino, noting the immense popularity of the app in the U.S.

“Yeah. Look, it’s, to your point, the application and the version of it that is shown in China is very, very different than the one here. In here, they’re doing things like displaying the blackout challenge specifically to a ten-year-old girl. This was alleged in a court case, and that girl ended up strangling herself to death. So we’re seeing very different content,” Carr explained, adding:

So the process right now is this is at the Treasury Department, the Biden administration’s Treasury Department, a process called CFIUS, Committee on Foreign Investment. And they’ve been for a year or so now looking at whether they can find a path forward to allow TikTok to continue to operate consistent with national security, in my view, and given the lack of trust that we have right now in Tik Tok, this is a basic IQ test for the administration, I don’t see a path forward.

Technically, we can assure ourselves that the data isn’t going to flow back to China and similarly that they’re not going to use the algorithm for foreign influence campaigns here. So I agree with Senator Rubio, with Gallagher and it’s bipartisan. Mark Warner, a Democrat, leader of the Senate Intel Committee, has said that it is TikTok that scares the dickens out of them.

“And yet there are a lot of people that are using it to try to influence politics here in the United States as well. American candidates are, take a look at the clip from just this past couple of weeks,” responded Perino before showing a clip of various Democrats’ campaign ads on the platform.

“So I show those videos because there are Democrats who have figured out a way like maybe we ought to be on TikTok so we can actually get young people engaged,” added Perino after the clip ran.

“And the youth vote was way up across the country in this past midterm election. So I wonder if there will be reluctance not just from the teenage girl contingent, but from people who say, well, look, it’s free speech. We should allow people to make their own decisions. What do you think of that?” asked Perino on the implications of a ban.

“Well, again, if you could ban an application based on cringe factor alone, I think those videos that you just showed will be evidence enough that we should turn the page on TikTok. The interesting to me is when you have all these politicians on TikTok if you ask them, do you put it on your phone, do you put on your device? They say, Oh, of course not,” replied Carr.

“We use burner devices, we send it to other phones to post it. And I think that’s an admission right there if you’re not willing to have it. For instance, in the White House, which is the case, then I think it’s very concerning that you’re on it and then encouraging other people to be on it without using burner devices and all those other special protections that you deem necessary for yourself,” he concluded.

Perino concluded the interview by asking Carr what he thought the possible timeline for a ban might be. Carr replied he believes a ban could come as soon as the next few weeks, before the new Congress is sworn in in January.

Watch the full clip above via Fox News