TikTok‘s China-based parent company Bytedance has reportedly continued to access data from users in the United States and tweak the app’s algorithm despite its promises not to do so made to the Biden administration in a bid to avoid regulation or a forced sale.
Several employees have reported sending unsecured data to different parts of TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, the Wall Street Journal reported, by going around the channels set up as part of the operation known as Project Texas, by which TikTok is supposed to protect U.S. user data by storing it all in Oracle servers based in Texas to prevent China-based employees from getting access.
The Project Texas team responsible for checking TikTok’s algorithm to ensure it is free from Chinese interference also struggles to keep up with the constant tweaks from ByteDance employees in China, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Project Texas was launched in 2021 as part of negotiations to mollify the concerns of U.S. regulators and lawmakers, who have for years considered whether TikTok should be allowed to operate in the U.S. under Chinese ownership, given fears about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence over Chinese companies.
TikTok is “voluntarily implementing our plan to protect U.S. user data,” a spokesperson said in a statement. The data that Oracle receives are used to train TikTok within the U.S. and are supervised by Oracle employees who operate as part of Project Texas, the spokesperson said. “Over the past year, we took the unprecedented step of granting Oracle full access to our source code and algorithm.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok executives said in internal communications that they occasionally need to share data with ByteDance to help train the algorithm or with third-party employees who are helping to moderate content on the platform.
Staffers were initially told they could only share data outside of Project Texas if aggregated and determined necessary to TikTok’s app. The data also could not be saved to Project Texas employees’ computers, a limitation that harmed the staff’s ability to keep up with TikTok’s demands.
These rules were slowly rolled back informally in spring 2023, with the data protections devolving into a “wink and a nod,” according to one staffer. While Project Texas claims to protect the data stored on Oracle’s servers, staff members said they received instructions that conflicted with that policy, such as sending data through ByteDance’s internal messaging app and using computers provided by ByteDance, making the staff uncertain how secure the data are.
Project Texas managers said in a memo in December that they planned to launch a special version of ByteDance’s internal app just for the project.
TikTok faces pressure from Congress as well as regulatory agencies. Several legislators have introduced legislation to restrict or ban the app. However, none of them have moved toward a floor vote yet.
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States are also pushing to ban TikTok. The vast majority passed restrictions on installing the app on student and government devices in 2022. Montana banned the app in May, only for it to the ban to be blocked in court. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) is now attempting to pass legislation restricting access to TikTok through the state legislature.
Meanwhile, TikTok continues to be one of the top apps for teenage users. Teenagers in the U.S. spent two hours a day on the short-form video app, according to a study by parental control software provider Qustodio.
