TikTok is on dangerous grounds right now.
It has recently been found out that certain employees at TikTok breached data privacy laws by spying on journalists and wrongfully gathering their private information. ByteDance, the company that owns the video-sharing platform, recently revealed this shocking news after conducting a thorough internal investigation on TikTok.
While the employees in question who are in the wrong have been fired by the parent company, it doesn’t seem to be enough to quell the fury of the general public, who are lashing out at the social media company for abusing privacy rights. And to say TikTok has dug a grave for itself would be a massive understatement.
TikTok Is Tracking the Private Information of Journalists
As per an investigation conducted by ByteDance, employees at TikTok had been spying on a number of journalists by getting a wrongful hold on the latter’s personal details and tracking their IP addresses.
Earlier this year, certain important business files and documents along with private conversations at ByteDance had been divulged to journalists. So during the summer, some of the company’s employees were trying to unearth any potential sources that could be associated with the aforementioned leak. But while doing so, they ended up getting access to people’s IP addresses as well as their user data, so as to determine whether or not they were in the same vicinity as the ByteDance employees.
See also: ‘Diluting Our Job’: Jennifer Aniston Says TikTok is Hurting Actors
Erich Andersen, the General Counsel at TikTok, in an “internal email shared with Forbes“ revealed that the people who got targeted include a former BuzzFeed reporter and a Financial Times reporter and a “small number of people connected” to them. Forbes first reported on this situation a couple of months ago in October, after which ByteDance launched an investigation to look into the matter.
In light of these events, the company has announced that it will be reorganizing its “Internal Audit and Risk Control department” and has already shown the door to the employees who partook in such behavior. However, while TikTok is taking strict measures to clean this enormous mess, people don’t seem to be very convinced by any of it as they thrash the company for such a misdemeanor.
TikTok Becomes the Subject of Sharp Censure from People
This isn’t the first time TikTok has wound up in the middle of a scandal. From ethical violations to privacy breaches and numerous, long-drawn legal battles with regard to the same, the company has been through some of the most insane highs and lows.
Following this recent controversy that hatched at TikTok, people have been finding it difficult to keep their cool as they march over Twitter to bash the video-hosting service for tracking user data. After all, it’s a rather serious matter, finding out that one’s private information is being gathered on a social media app while they use it.
See also: “After Spending $44 Billion?”: Elon Musk Resigning as the CEO of Twitter Sparks a Heated Debate
While TikTok does seem to have taken the necessary precautionary steps to ensure that something of this sort doesn’t take place again, people don’t seem to have that kind of faith in the company anymore. But only time will tell whether history repeats itself or not.
Source: Culture Crave via Twitter
