TikTok Denies Beijing Connection, Dodges House Questions
TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, data with the Chinese government, the company wrote the House Commerce Committee in response to members’ questions for the record (QFR), which the committee released Friday. The company dodged several questions, including requests for specifics about how many engineers it employs in the U.S. and China.
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Committee members asked more than 375 questions as a follow-up to testimony from CEO Shou Zi Chew (see 2303230064), with the company given 21 days to respond. TikTok downplayed ties to Beijing, saying it actively opposes any efforts by the Chinese government to manipulate content on the platform or surveil users. It also distanced itself from four former employees who allegedly violated company policy by collecting user data from American journalists. They were two Chinese employees and two American employees, three of whom were fired and one who resigned, according to TikTok.
“TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government,” the company said. “Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one were ever made. TikTok is committed to respecting local laws in the markets in which it operates.”
Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., sought answers about how many of TikTok’s algorithm engineers are employed in China and the U.S. The company dodged those requests, saying it “looks to minimize the number of people who have access to user data and limit it to those who need the access in order to do their jobs.” Project Texas, the company’s internal effort to address U.S. security concerns, “will restrict access to protected U.S. user data to USDS personnel,” the company said.
TikTok said it doesn’t have a “dedicated” office in Beijing but has employees who work at a number of offices there. The company declined to respond to a request for it to list the number of TikTok and ByteDance employees in Cayman Island, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Beijing. It responded that TikTok is a “privately held company with approximately 7,000 employees” in the U.S.
The company is committed to “ongoing cooperation” with the committee for an investigation into the four former employees who allegedly accessed the data of Forbes journalists Emily Baker-White, Katharine Schwab and Richard Nieva. TikTok hired an outside law firm to investigate the activity TikTok labeled “Misguided Effort,” which dates back to 2022. The outside counsel briefed the committee on the matter, and the company repeatedly offered further briefings in response to questions for the record.
According to TikTok, the four former employees accessed Baker-White’s IP address and compared it with IP addresses of TikTok employees. Data from Nieva and Schwab wasn’t accessed by the employees, the company said. Rodgers asked if the employees in question were ever employed by an intelligence or law enforcement agency outside the U.S. Personnel files on the four former employees “provide no information indicating that they had previously been employed by any intelligence and/or law enforcement agency of a non-U.S. country,” said TikTok. Investigators are exploring whether other employees were knowingly involved, said TikTok.
The company said it opposes efforts to ban the app in the U.S. or force a divestiture, saying new ownership wouldn’t solve data flow issues faced by all media companies. The company cited Project Texas and its plans for all U.S. data to be stored in the U.S., hosted by an American company with data access controlled by American personnel. “A ban that hurts American small businesses, damages the country’s economy, silences the voices of over 150 million Americans, and reduces competition in an increasingly concentrated market is not the solution to a solvable problem,” it said.
TikTok acknowledged that the company tracks users’ keystrokes when using the app. TikTok collects “certain keystrokes or rhythms for security and performance related purposes, such as to verify the authenticity of an account, for risk control, debugging, troubleshooting, and monitoring for proper performance,” it said. TikTok said it tracks when a key is pressed, or a “key event,” but it never tracked the “strings of characters” being typed by users. Since September, “for users using current versions of the app, no key events are logged when the in-app browser is used to view a third party website,” the company said. We couldn't obtain comments from the offices of Rodgers; ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J.; House Innovation Subcommittee Chairman Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla.; and House Innovation Subcommittee ranking member Jan Schakowsky.