Employees of Chinese technology behemoth ByteDance inappropriately retrieved data from social media platform TikTok to monitor American journalists in an attempt to trace the source of leaks to the media, the company acknowledged in December 2022.
Such an admission can be contrasted with TikTok’s widespread efforts to persuade customers and governments of key markets such as the United States that they safeguard users’ data privacy and that the social media platform does not undermine the national security of these markets.