With TikTok staring at a ban in the US unless it quickly finds a buyer, the head of Instagram has said he is far from enthused by the prospect of a drastic step to prohibit the functioning of the short video-sharing platform in the country as it may set a wrong precedent.
San Francisco:
In an interview to CNBC on Friday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that "the risks of a fragmented Internet" may outweigh any short-term benefits that the Facebook-owned platform may gain from a potential TikTok ban.
"If countries start to silo Internet within them," that will be much more problematic than the short-term benefits, he said.
However, Instagram last month unveiled a video feature called "Reels" that looks and works in a way similar to TikTok.
Mosseri even said that in India, which banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese apps in June, the company is seeing rapid user growth.
Access to a bulk of social media apps that originated in he US, including Facebook and Instagram, is already restricted in China.
The Donald Trump administration in the US earlier raised concerns that China could have access to data of TikTok users.
Both China and TikTok denied the allegations. That did not stop Trump from issuing executive orders in August that put pressure on the platform owned by Chinese unicorn ByteDance to find a buyer for its US operations.