Yet the timing of this “strategic organization” follows the Biden administration easing the pressure that TikTok faced from former President Trump. TikTok described the appointments as “a strategic reorganization to optimize TikTok’s global teams and support the company’s unprecedented growth.” Not only will Chew be CEO but he will also continue as CFO of TikTok’s Chinese parent company, serving in both roles concurrently. These legal statements followed a public statement in October 2019 where TikTok stated “none of our data is subject to Chinese law,” “TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China,” and “we are not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government.”īut yesterday, TikTok’s framing as being independent of its Chinese parent was shattered when ByteDance’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Shouzi Chew, was named as the new TikTok CEO. In an October 2020 legal filing, TikTok’s global chief security officer, Roland Cloutier, wrote “the source code and user data for TikTok are maintained separately from the source code and user data for Douyin (and other ByteDance products).” He added that TikTok would not comply with a request for user data from the Chinese government. In an August 2020 lawsuit, TikTok wrote that it had erected software barriers that keep US user data separate from the data stored by ByteDance and noted that key executives, including its Chief Executive Officer (CEO), are “all Americans based in the United States-and therefore are not subject to Chinese law.” Last year, as video-sharing app TikTok faced mounting scrutiny over reports of its ties to the Chinese state and the Trump administration was pushing for it to be banned in the US, TikTok consistently presented its US operations as being completely separate from its Chinese parent company ByteDance.

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