ByteDance, which has its headquarters in Beijing, said last year that some of its staff members had unauthorised access to TikTok user data.
Currently, a report claims that the app’s developers’ “critical financial information” has been kept on servers in China as it continues to face regulatory scrutiny in the US and overseas.
These most current facts about the short-form video-sharing platform’s procedures have only lately surfaced in a Forbes article.
As a point of comparison, detractors have often cited TikTok’s legal need to provide data to the Chinese Communist Party (which controls a share of ByteDance) upon request.
However, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said at a congressional hearing in March that his business has “always” held American users’ data in Singapore and Virginia.
Despite the remarks and associated allegations about Project Texas (a plan allegedly capable of hiding user data from Americans in the United States), ByteDance has been charged with preserving exclusive backdoor access to TikTok’s database in China, according to a complaint.
The previously cited Forbes article gives further background information on the latter lawsuit and the general accusations.
The storey claims that social security and tax identification data of authors and companies have been kept “on systems in China that are accessible by staff there.”
The same report claims that “a plethora of documents” were acquired and examined to reach the conclusion, which raises intriguing questions about whether staff members really viewed the data.
As said, ByteDance has already acknowledged that members of its staff have examined user data in China without permission.
According to Forbes, TikTok chose not to react to inquiries on the subject despite the fact that it has been blocked on government devices in several states as well as the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the European Union, and France.
A query concerning whether authors’ financial records are now still being kept in China was one of the unanswered inquiries.
Of course, it will be intriguing to observe how the shocking revelation affects TikTok’s future in the United States.
Currently, the app is continuing to function normally in (most of) the United States despite a purported forced-sale demand from the White House and many bipartisan measures (which state the same intent but differ widely in scope) targeting it.
Since ByteDance has allegedly spent $14 million on lobbying in the United States alone since 2019, it stands to reason that many powerful corporations are unlikely to be eager to see the TikTok app, which is partnered with the New York Yankees and the NFL, banned in the country.
In addition to the lack of action taken by the government over the app, it seems that the parents of the service’s numerous users who are under 18 are either uninformed of or indifferent about TikTok’s alleged exploitation of children’s data and claimed practise of exposing children to sexual material.
Specifically in the music industry, TikTok is moving forward in spite of the governmental crackdown and difficult licencing negotiations with the major labels (most recently, the launch of a “Artist Impact Program” and “a worldwide music discovery centre”).