There are two initiatives that TikTok is trying to respond to the doubts of the United States and the European Union on managing the data of their citizens who are users of the platform: they are called Project Texas and Project Clover respectively, and we have written about both several times on Italian Tech (here and here, for example).
In particular, talking about the second, which is taking shape through i datacenter built in Ireland and Norway, we had reported the words of Theo Bertram, one of the vice presidents by TikTok: “Data that should not circulate will never leave Europe and will never be accessible outside Europe, but the authorities must understand that some must instead circulateso that we can do our job.”
Social network TikTok invests 12 billion to protect the data of European users: trip to the data center in Norway by our correspondent Emanuele Capone 30 November 2023
The “hidden chain of command” and relations with Beijing
This precise point seems to be at the center of numerous controversies in the United States, after the statements made to Fortune by some former employees of the company, according to which Project Texas it would be “more than anything else appearance”, behind which the substance of continuous and close contacts with the executives of ByteDance (the company that controls TikTok) based in Beijing is hidden. One of these former employees, a certain Evan Turner, who worked as a data scientist for TikTok for about 6 months, between April and September 2022, told of a “hidden chain of command” and reports that were sent every two weeks sent to Beijing with the data of hundreds of thousands of US users (such as username, email, IP addresses and geographic and demographic information), used to understand how to possibly change TikTok’s algorithm to keep users on the app longer.
The idea behind Project Texas, which is called that because Oracle (the American company responsible for the data of American TikTok users) is based in Texas, is that information on American users must never leave the States nor may they be accessible to ByteDance employees in China. Unless the conditions Bertram told us about at the end of 2023 occur, of course.
twitter: TikTok’s response to Fortune’s accusations
Today’s article from @iamsternlicht is factually inaccurate.
Facts matter.
FACT: Our secure environment for protected U.S. user data was isolated in January 2023 and is overseen by USDS personnel. After that point, new protected U.S. user data was inaccessible to anyone outside…
— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) April 15, 2024
The Guardian: “TikTok isn’t the internet’s only villain”
It should also be noted that not all former employees contacted by Fortune said the same things or made the same accusations: others, in the long and detailed piece written by Alexandra Sternlicht, spoke of “exaggerated concerns” or “motivated by racism” towards China. Again: A former executive pointed out that Project Texas and Project Clover have “drastically changed things” in the management of American and European user data; a certain Jacob Wallach, who worked for TikTok for almost two years between 2020 and 2022, recalled that TikTok’s data collection practices they are no less worrying or invasive than Meta’sGoogle or Amazon.
This last point is also a point reiterated several times (here is the latest one) also by the British The Guardian, who often reminded us that “focusing only on TikTok as the villain of the Internet loses sight of a much more important task.” That is, establish clearer rules for how all the giants of the Internet, whether they are Americans or Chinesecollect and manage information about people.
This isn’t it though the line of defense chosen by the company, who for any request for comment refers to an articulated and very harsh tweet from his official profile, which essentially dismantles the Fortune article point by point: “Everything reported in the text is based on information prior to the creation of Project Texas and about lies from individuals who had no access to or information about data management and our security procedures.” For our part, we have asked TikTok Italia for comment about these allegations: We will update this article when we receive it.
@capoema