TikTok employees collected information on at least two American journalists

TikTok employees had access to the personal data of at least two American journalists. This was revealed by an investigation published by the New York Times, which had access to some internal documents of ByteDance.

According to the material obtained, TikTok would not have used the information to conduct dossier activities against the press, but to try to identify some sources within the company who had disclosed confidential material to journalists. Ironically, this attempt was also revealed by an internal ‘mole’ at TikTok.

Specifically, TikTok employees would have collected the IP address of at least two journalists, as well as some people (relatives and collaborators) connected with them. The IP address would then be used to trace the movements of the journalists , in the hope of being able to understand, in this way, which TikTok employees they had met with. It is not clear whether the operation led to the identification of employees who collaborated with the American press.

In an internal email also obtained and disclosed by the New York Times, Byte Dance CEO Rubio Lang said he was deeply disappointed by the news, explaining that TikTok had failed to fulfill its promise to have built a safe environment. “Our work has been jeopardized by the misconduct of some individual people.” The internal investigation, we read between the lines in Lang’s email, would therefore not have been approved by ByteDance’s top management.