Shocker: ByteDance Still Receives Data From U.S. TikTok Users
Alexandra Sternlicht, reporting for Fortune (News+):
Evan Turner, who worked at TikTok as a senior data scientist from
April to September in 2022, said TikTok concealed the involvement
of its Chinese owner during his employment. When hired, Turner
initially reported to a ByteDance executive in Beijing. But later
that year, after the company announced a major initiative to store
TikTok’s U.S. user data only in the U.S., Turner was reassigned — on paper, at least — to an American manager in Seattle, he says.
But Turner says a human resources representative revealed during a
video conference call that he would, in reality, continue to work
with the ByteDance executive. The stealth chain of command
contradicted what TikTok’s executives had said about the company’s
independence from ByteDance, Turner says. […]
Nearly every 14 days, as part of Turner’s job throughout 2022, he
emailed spreadsheets filled with data for hundreds of thousands of
U.S. users to ByteDance workers in Beijing. That data included
names, email addresses, IP addresses, and geographic and
demographic information of TikTok U.S. users, he says. The goal
was to sift through the information to mine for insights like the
geographical regions where users watched the most videos of a
particular genre and decide how the company should invest to
encourage users to be more active. It all took place after the
company had started its initiative to keep sensitive U.S. user
data in the U.S., and only available to U.S. workers.
“I literally worked on a project that gave U.S. data to China,”
Turner says. “They were completely complicit in that. There were
Americans that were working in upper management that were
completely complicit in this.”
Packy McCormick:
It’s astonishing that we don’t have the political will to simply ban TikTok.
★
Alexandra Sternlicht, reporting for Fortune (News+):
Evan Turner, who worked at TikTok as a senior data scientist from
April to September in 2022, said TikTok concealed the involvement
of its Chinese owner during his employment. When hired, Turner
initially reported to a ByteDance executive in Beijing. But later
that year, after the company announced a major initiative to store
TikTok’s U.S. user data only in the U.S., Turner was reassigned — on paper, at least — to an American manager in Seattle, he says.
But Turner says a human resources representative revealed during a
video conference call that he would, in reality, continue to work
with the ByteDance executive. The stealth chain of command
contradicted what TikTok’s executives had said about the company’s
independence from ByteDance, Turner says. […]
Nearly every 14 days, as part of Turner’s job throughout 2022, he
emailed spreadsheets filled with data for hundreds of thousands of
U.S. users to ByteDance workers in Beijing. That data included
names, email addresses, IP addresses, and geographic and
demographic information of TikTok U.S. users, he says. The goal
was to sift through the information to mine for insights like the
geographical regions where users watched the most videos of a
particular genre and decide how the company should invest to
encourage users to be more active. It all took place after the
company had started its initiative to keep sensitive U.S. user
data in the U.S., and only available to U.S. workers.
“I literally worked on a project that gave U.S. data to China,”
Turner says. “They were completely complicit in that. There were
Americans that were working in upper management that were
completely complicit in this.”
It’s astonishing that we don’t have the political will to simply ban TikTok.