Social media platform TikTok vehemently denied report that suggested its parent company ByteDance planned to monitor US citizens via the app.
"Forbes' reporting about TikTok continues to lack both rigor and journalistic integrity. Specifically, Forbes chose not to include the portion of our statement that disproved the feasibility of its core allegation: TikTok does not collect precise GPS location information from US users, meaning TikTok could not monitor US users in the way the article suggested. TikTok has never been used to 'target' any members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists, nor do we serve them a different content experience than other users," the company stated on Twitter.
A Forbes spokesperson, however, relayed the magazine is confident in the sourcing and stands by the report.
The statement was issued as a response to the allegations that the Internal Audit and Risk Control team of TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance planned to use the data provided by the app to surveil US citizens as a part of their probe into its employees.
TikTok previously had privacy issues in the US, as the platform had to move American users' information to servers at Austin-headquartered Oracle back in June. The move was addressing the concerns of US authorities that the information could be transferred to the Chinese government.
Before that, the company met a string of allegations conсerning data safety - however, the company denied all the assertions, stressing that it cooperates with the US authorities on the issue.