A China-based team at ByteDance planned to monitor the location of certain people in the United States via its app TikTok, Forbes reported on Thursday.
According to the report, ByteDance's Internal Audit and Risk Control department is in charge of the project that conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former employees of the company, but has allegedly planned to collect data of at least two US citizens who were never employed at ByteDance.
A TikTok spokesperson stated the team is gathering location information to "among other things, help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behavior," but the news outlet claimed materials it viewed showed that the information was used to "surveil individual American citizens."
TikTok denied the report and claimed Forbes "continues to lack both rigor and journalistic integrity."
