Former TikTok employees reportedly say the app has worked closely with its parent company, Chinese technology giant ByteDance, despite claiming otherwise.
In one example, Evan Turner, who worked as a senior data scientist at TikTok from April to September 2022, said that he first reported to a ByteDance executive in Beijing, but at some point was told to start reporting to a Seattle-based executive.The only problem was that this American TikTok executive did not exist, except for on paper, Turner said.
Turner said he never met the alleged Seattle-based executive and continued his weekly check-ins with the ByteDance executive in China. The former TikTok employee noted that the data included names, email addresses, and IP addresses, as well as geographic and demographic information of U.S. users on the Chinese app.