According to The New York Times, the Chinese company reportedly tracked journalists’ IP addresses to see if they were in proximity with TikTok employees suspected of leaking the company’s information. In an email to employees, ByteDance CEO Rubo Liang complained their public trust is undermined due to the “misconduct of a few individuals” and said he is “deeply disappointed.” TikTok general counsel Erich Andersen also reported that the company’s Internet Audit and Risk team was restructured to prevent similar incidents.
Recent controversy encourages US lawmakers to tighten the grip on TikTok
The investigation into TikTok was done by an outside law firm and showed ByteDance had tracked some journalists from Financial Times, Forbes, and BuzzFeed. The Verge says ByteDance’s head of audit Song Ye, has left the company following the investigation. Additionally, three other employees were fired, including Chris Lepitak, TikTok’s head of internal audit. As per a Forbes report, three of their journalists, Emily Baker-White, Katharine Schwab, and Richard Nieva, have been tracked by TikTok. These people were formerly working at BuzzFeed News. Back in October, Forbes reported that TikTok is being used to track specific US citizens’ locations. While ByteDance first denied the news, the report had them start an investigation within the company to find the employees who were leaking news to the media. Financial Times also says TikTok tracks their journalist Cristina Criddle. The FT claims Criddle’s tracking is probably because of her reports about TikTok employees who have left the London office since the beginning of the year. These employers were reportedly forced to work 12 hours a day or demoted after taking leave. TikTok has taken some steps to gain the trust of US lawmakers, including keeping the US user’s data within the country through collaborating with Oracle. However, US lawmakers are strongly seeking to ban TikTok from operating in the US market, or at least from government employees smartphones. The FCC even urged Google and Apple to remove the app from their stores. ByteDance already asserted that TikTok would never be used to target journalists, but the new allegations are undeniable.
