“The probe, known internally as Project Raven, began last summer after BuzzFeed News published a piece exposing that China-based ByteDance workers had frequently accessed U.S. user data, based on more than 80 hours of audio recordings of internal TikTok meetings,” Baker-White writes. “‘This is a clear assault on the concept of a free press and its important role in a functioning democracy,” argues Forbes journalists content officer Randall Lane. ‘We are waiting for a straight answer from ByteDance, since this raises serious concerns about what they are doing with the data they collect from TikTok users.’ Following the publication of this report, TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide stated, “Certain employees, who are no longer working at ByteDance, engaged in flagrant misuse of their power to get access to customer data. This behaviour is inappropriate and inconsistent with TikTok’s attempts to win our customers’ confidence.” “This new development reinforces serious concerns that the social media platform has allowed TikTok engineers and executives in the People’s Republic of China to repeatedly access private data of U.S. users, despite repeated assurances to lawmakers and users that this data was secure,” said the statement.
