The concerns surrounding TikTok in the US government center around the potential for the app to be used as a tool for spying by Chinese officials. FBI Director Chris Wray referred to it as a “Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party” and stated that it has no place on government devices until it completely severs ties with China. TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, attempted to address these concerns by routing all domestic traffic through Oracle servers in the US and pledging to delete all US user data from its servers. However, the recent revelation that ByteDance fired four employees for inappropriately obtaining the data of TikTok users in the US, including two reporters, has likely not helped the company’s cause. The employees gained access to the IP addresses and other data linked to the reporters in an effort to discover who was leaking internal information to the press.
