Amid calls for ban in US, TikTok puts forward $1.5B transparency plan
TikTok parent company ByteDance Ltd. has put forward a proposal to increase transparency amid ongoing calls for the app to be banned in the U.S. because of the company’s links to the Chinese government.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that in talks with lawmakers and others, TikTok has put forward details of a $1.5 billion plan to reorganize the company’s U.S. operations. The reorganization would include an independent, third-party monitor, possibly headed by Oracle Corp., that would review code related to how TikTok selects which videos to serve users and how TikTok identifies which videos to delete.
A TikTok spokesperson told the Journal that the company believes the proposal would address concerns about content recommendations and user-data access with layers of government and independent oversight. “We are not waiting for an agreement to be in place,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve made substantial progress on implementing that solution over the past year and look forward to completing that work to put these concerns to rest.”
The outstanding question is whether the proposal goes far enough to appease lawmakers. Although oversight and transparency certainly sound positive, the company’s actions in the past will likely spur continued skepticism in Washington. Those actions include a report in December that found TikTok employees accessed the data of at least two U.S. journalists.
ByteDance fired four employees in the wake of the exposure and came forward with details of what had happened, but the fact that employees were accessing the data of journalists isn’t a good look for a company accused of doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Calls to ban TikTok in the U.S. date back to the Trump administration, and though a countrywide ban did not happen two years ago, some states and parts of the federal government are now banning the app. The House of Representatives banned TikTok on House-issued devices on Dec. 28 and it was reported at the time that it could be extended to all government devices.
Also on the table is another former Trump-era policy that did not come to fruition: forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok in the U.S. The idea of a forced sale of TikTok is said to have been discussed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., with representatives from the Pentagon and the Department of Justice reportedly pushing for the sale.
Photo: Unsplash
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