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Report: TikTok’s efforts to silo US data are ‘largely cosmetic’
One former employee said they had biweekly meetings with ByteDance execs.
TikTok has described the corporate restructuring, which it dubbed Project Texas, as “an unprecedented initiative dedicated to making every American on TikTok feel safe, with confidence that their data is secure and the platform is free from outside influence.” Several former employees, however, told Fortune that Project Texas is instead “largely cosmetic” and that they and their colleagues continued to work closely with Beijing-based ByteDance executives after the plan’s implementation. Evan Turner, who worked at TikTok as a data scientist between April and September of 2022, described a “stealth chain of command” in which he was reassigned — on paper — to a manager in Seattle but continued reporting to executives in China. Puris, TikTok’s former head of business marketing, sued the company for discrimination in February, claiming she was fired because her Beijing-based higher-ups didn’t consider her demure enough.
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