TikTok employees overlap with Chinese state media

A new report found some overlap between hundreds of employees at TikTok's parent company ByteDance and Chinese state media outlets.

According to Forbes, more than 300 workers have previously held positions in Chinese state media and 15 of them currently work for both of them, and there are hundreds of LinkedIn profiles for the tech firm's employees.

According to the report, current ByteDance employees are also employed by Chinese state media entities, including Xinhua News Agency, China Radio International and China Central China Global Television. The U.S. State Department has labeled these organizations as foreign government functionaries. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr called on the CEOs of Google and Apple to remove the app from stores, citing reports that the app harvests swaths of sensitive data. TikTok is not what it appears to be on the surface. Carr wrote that sheep's clothing was the sheep's clothing. TikTok is a sophisticated surveillance tool that collects large amounts of personal and sensitive data. ByteDance spokesman Jennifer Banks told Forbes that hiring is purely based on an individual's professional capacity to do the job. She said that our China-market businesses include people who have previously worked in government or state media positions in China. In addition to China, the employees bring experience in government, media, and public policy from dozens of markets. She said that ByteDance does not allow employees to hold second or part-time jobs or any outside business activity in response to the 15 profiles of concurrent ByteDance-Chinese state media employees, saying that it would cause a conflict of interest. TikTok recently admitted that employees outside the U.S. could access user information, but insisted that such access required robust cybersecurity protocols and authorization from its U.S. security team.

Internal documents from TikTok show that the company actively pushed employees to downplay the China association in order to deal with the growing attention and criticism, according to Gizmodo.