TikTok Has A New Problem…. An Employee Is Fighting It On Capitol Hill With Allegations That China Can See Users Data
TikTok has a bunch of problems in a bunch of places at the moment. But its problems in the US have just gotten worse. Here’s how that is the case:
In an exclusive interview with The Washington Post, the former employee, who worked for six months in the company’s Trust and Safety division ending in early 2022, said the issues could leave data from TikTok’s more than 100 million U.S. users exposed to China-based employees of its parent company ByteDance, even as the company races to implement new safety rules walling off domestic user information.
His allegations threaten to undermine this $1.5 billion restructuring plan, known as Project Texas, which TikTok has promoted widely in Washington as a way to neutralize the risk of data theft or misuse by the Chinese government.
They could also fuel speculation that the wildly popular short-video app remains vulnerable to having its video-recommendation algorithm and user data distorted for propaganda or espionage. U.S. authorities have not shared evidence that the Chinese government has accessed TikTok’s data or code.
Well, if you’re TikTok you’re thinking that you’re in deep trouble here. They’ve already pushed back on his claims. But at this point, nothing the company says is going to make lawmakers on Capitol Hill feel different and a ban via the RESTRICT act is likely. And that ban is likely to be copied by other countries which means that TikTok could disappear from millions of phones in short order.
It sucks to be TikTok.
March 16, 2023 at 8:22 am
[…] the veracity of that last sentence is in question. But in any case, this is the latest ban of the popular social media app. And it’s not the […]