TikTok, which has made its mark among today’s most successful and popular social media platforms, has been having some problems with the US government for a long time. According to the news emerging today, the platform may be leaking every step of some important people living in the USA to the Chinese government.
Is TikTok following big names? It can be banned in the USA!
The biggest reason for the claims made about TikTok is generally due to the fact that it is under the roof of the China-based ByteDance company. Because concerns about leaking data to the Chinese government are increasing day by day. Of course, according to the USA, these concerns are not unfounded.
Finally, due to the news published by Forbes, the parties clashed on social media. Forbes said that ByteDance may be using TikTok to track the location of key figures in the US government.
TikTok, on the other hand, shared that a part of its statement was deliberately censored by Forbes, that they could not track GPS and that it was taken against them. However, the journalist who wrote the news said that they did not mention GPS data and the company deliberately diverted the issue.
In the post made by Forbes, addressing its own news, the following was said:
“TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance plans to use the TikTok app to track the physical location of certain American citizens, according to materials reviewed by us.”
In the post made by TikTok on the news of Forbes, the following was said.
“News about TikTok continues to lack both rigor and journalistic integrity. Forbes specifically chose not to include part of our statement, which refutes the fundamental feasibility of its claim. TikTok does not collect precise GPS location information from US users.
This means that TikTok cannot track US users as the article suggests. TikTok was never used to “target” any member of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists. So we don’t offer them a different content experience than other users.
As is standard in companies in our industry, our internal audit team follows established policies and processes to conduct internal investigations of violations of the code of conduct and obtain the information they need.
Any use of internal audit resources, as claimed by Forbes, will be grounds for immediate dismissal of company personnel.”
Journalist Emily Baker-White, who wrote the related news, said that TikTok did not respond to the issue raised in the report and diverted the issue with the following words:
“We never mentioned GPS in the news. In fact, we told their spokesperson that they are collecting approximate location via IP address. Not using GPS doesn’t mean they can’t use this approximate location to track certain people.
I’m glad for TikTok’s announcement that it’s not being used to “target” certain groups. Still, I’m concerned they plan to use it to track certain Americans, as we’ve reported. In addition, when we asked them about this issue on Wednesday, they preferred to remain silent.
In fact, neither TikTok nor ByteDance has denied anything we’ve reported since then, both when we said what we planned to write in the pre-release of the story and when we asked them to comment.“