TikTok user data from the two journalists, who worked for the Financial Times and BuzzFeed, was accessed while ByteDance employees were investigating potential employee leaks to the press, according to the company.and two in China, were fired following an investigation conducted on behalf of the company by an outside law firm, the CEOs of TikTok and ByteDance revealed to employees in two separate emails Thursday.
The move comes amid the US Senate's move to ban the app on all US Government devices. A similar ban is already in place for all US military devices.The criticism ramped up earlier this year after a BuzzFeed News report said some US user data has been repeatedly accessed from China, and cited one employee who allegedly said that "everything is seen in China".
"The misconduct of these individuals, who are no longer employed at ByteDance, was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data," Oberwetter said in a statement Thursday. "This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users.
"It's even more troubling that this comes in the wake of a series of reports by BuzzFeed News that exposed major issues within its parent company, from employees accessing American users' data from China to ByteDance's attempts to push pro-China messaging to Americans," the BuzzFeed spokesperson said.