According to South China Morning Post, TikTok, ByteDance's short video application with more than 1 billion users worldwide is facing challenges with its expansion due to personnel fluctuations and some doubts about the platform's data security.
The "cold losses" that Tiktok is facing
According to Wired, on July 18, TikTok also warned employees in the US and UK about upcoming staff cuts. In other parts of Europe, the issue of layoffs has also begun to grow internally.
On July 19, David Ortiz, who worked at Salesforce and Snap, TikTok's head of US money-making products, announced his resignation from LinkedIn, saying his role in the short-form video network was "eliminated in an effort to restructure the entire company".
Changes in personnel have also occurred at higher levels. On July 17, ByteDance's short video network announced that Kim Albarella, currently in charge of security risks, will replace Roland Cloutier as global security director and move to the role of strategic consultant from September.
TikTok has not commented yet, but according to wired, spokesperson Anna Sopel said that the company often makes personnel adjustments to suit its goals. There are a small number of roles in the operations and marketing groups that have changed their focus. This cannot be called a restructuring of the whole company, spokesperson Anna Sopel shared.
Western countries worry about TikTok's data security rights
TikTok's new move comes as TikTok's data security activities are suspected in many markets. Last week, Italy's data protection agency announced that TikTok may have violated European Union (EU) rules by providing targeted advertising without user consent. A TikTok representative later said that the company "tries to build personalized experiences" and "commits to respecting user privacy".
On July 16, according to Bloomberg, TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi wrote in an email that employees of the company in China could delete security protocols to access certain information of US TikTok users, including videos, public comments, and even delete them. Zi later admitted the problem, but stressed that no data was shared with the Chinese government.
On July 18, according to the Australian Financial Review, research from Australian cybersecurity company Internet 2.0 showed that TikTok had collected "excessive" user data. The Internet 2.0 expert analyzed and found that the ByteDance application checks the device location at least once an hour, continuously trying to access the account even if the user refuses. TikTok later responded that "their app collects much less data than other popular software."
In the US, Brendan Carr, head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), also publicly suggested that Apple and Google remove TikTok from two app stores, the App Store and Play Store, citing " posing a national security risk due to widespread data collection".
Tiktok's solutions to "securfy" users
To address the concerns, TikTok has now established a new division called Data Security in the US. According to Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of public policy in the Asia region, the department will be tasked with "reducing employee access to US user data and reducing data sending between regions, including data to China".
In addition, to reassure users, TikTok said it plans to establish a transparent center to explain the application's source code system and how the algorithm works on short video networks.
The trial is expected to take place in Los Angeles, Washington and Dublin. TikTok has also repeatedly said that its user data is locally stored, with Backoops in Singapore. In June, the company said it was starting to move all of the US user data to Oracle-controlled servers.
