Social media gets bump as FCC member urges TikTok ban
5./15 WEST

Social media names are finding a sudden leg up to session highs alongside the release of an interview with an FCC commissioner who argues that the United States should ban TikTok (BDNCE).
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is quickly up 3.7%, and Snap (NYSE:SNAP) has spiked 5.8%. (Other names with less exposure to short-form video aren't rallying: Alphabet is lower (GOOG) -2.9%, (GOOGL) -2.9%, and Pinterest (PINS) is -0.2%.)
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, the senior commissioner in the Republican minority on the commission, told Axios the Council on Foreign Investment in the U.S. should ban the explosively popular Chinese app.
"I donât believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban," Carr says in reaction to recent reports about how TikTok and parent ByteDance (BDNCE) handle U.S. user data.
It's not a world in which "you could have sufficient confidence" that data isn't flowing back to the Chinese Communist Party, Carr says.
TikTok points out that Carr isn't tied to discussions the U.S. government is engaging in with the company, and says it's confident a deal can be reached to address security concerns.