TikTok fires again at Forbes, denies report of a plan to trace particular US residents utilizing its app

TikTok is strongly pushing again in opposition to a Forbes report alleging that its dad or mum firm wished to make use of the video app to “monitor the non-public location of some particular Americans.” In a series of tweets, TikTok accused Forbes of leaving off an important a part of its assertion, which says that “TikTok doesn’t gather exact GPS location data from US customers,” regardless of the article’s claims that its dad or mum firm ByteDance thought-about acquiring “location information from U.S. customers’ gadgets.”

The article, posted earlier on Thursday, stated that ByteDance’s Inside Audit staff — often tasked with keeping track of those that at present work for the corporate or who’ve labored for the corporate up to now — deliberate on surveilling no less than two People who “had by no means had an employment relationship with the corporate.” Forbes says its report was based mostly on supplies it reviewed however didn’t embody particulars about who was probably going to be tracked or why ByteDance was planning on monitoring them, claiming that doing so might put its sources in danger.

Forbes’ article says that TikTok and ByteDance didn’t reply questions on whether or not the interior audit staff had ever focused US politicians, activists, public figures, or journalists, and in contrast the alleged plan to Uber’s “greyball” program that focused particular customers, in some instances serving regulators a deceptive model of the app.

In its thread, TikTok says the app has “never been used to ‘target’” anybody in these teams and that it doesn’t change the in-app expertise for these folks. (It’s price noting that’s not an absolute denial of any consideration for particular focusing on or {that a} request was ever made — TikTok’s solely saying its app has not been used for that goal.) The corporate says that the audit team “follows set insurance policies and processes to accumulate data they should conduct inner investigations.”

It additionally claims that anybody caught doing what Forbes alleged within the article could be fired.

The safety of TikTok information has been a broadly-cited concern in regards to the platform for years, particularly for US lawmakers involved in regards to the Chinese language authorities’s entry to information about US residents. After a June report from BuzzFeed News alleged that US person information had been accessed from China, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew wrote a letter to Republican critics addressing how the corporate planned to keep American user data separate from ByteDance.