According to a recent allegation, TikTok allegedly gave its employees instructions to submit information about American users to its parent firm, which is situated in Beijing. According to the article, which cited former workers, the data allegedly comprised of spreadsheets with personal information such as names, emails, demographics, and geographical data. TikTok maintained a secret structure and obscured its strong ties to ByteDance, even though it claimed to have split out from the firm since 2022.

TikTok has categorically denied these claims, calling them the creations of irate ex-employees. TikTok Policy rejected the piece as factually incorrect in a post on X.

It continued by saying: "Facts matter." FACT: In January 2023, we segregated our secure environment for safeguarded user data from the United States and staff from USDS. From that point on, anyone outside of USDS, including worldwide ByteDance and TikTok, could not access any new secured U.S. user data. There are certain restrictions for compliance and legal reasons.

The article published by @iamsternlicht today is factually incorrect.

FACT: In January 2023, we segregated our secure environment for safeguarded user data from the United States and staff from USDS. New protected user data from the United States was then unavailable to other parties.

Eleven former TikTok workers were interviewed between August 2022 and April 2023 for the Fortune article. An insider said that TikToks' purported split from ByteDance was really a front for a clandestine hierarchical structure in which US employees continued to answer to Chinese management.

Every two weeks, he added, he was supposed to submit US user data to Beijing.

An other staff member, who had positions in business development at ByteDance and TikTok in the US, provided information on Lark, the internal messaging platform utilized by both businesses. They stated that conversations on US user data were part of the Lark surveillance conducted by ByteDance staff in China.

Though Chinese legislation requires corporations to submit data upon government request, it is unknown how much access the Chinese government has to this data.