All to often in tech news you read the line “we reached out to company xyz and did not get a response”. Many companies these days feel the best way to deal with negative press is just not to acknowledge it.
Hell, Facebook has been playing that trick for years, and if it doesn’t go away you just apologise and promise to try and do better. TikTok it seems hasn’t attended their media avoidance classes yet, because they reached out to us.
Following our post today “Calls for TikTok to be banned in Australia — is there any truth to the reasons why?” we were contacted by TikTok Australia, and to say they don’t think a ban is warranted would be an understatement.
Having made our argument this morning we think it fair to allow TikTok to respond. Lee Hunter, General Manager TikTok Australia said:
TikTok does not share information of our users in Australia with any foreign government, including the Chinese Government, and would not do so if asked. We place the highest importance on user privacy and integrity.
Mr Hunter continued “TikTok Australia user data is stored in Singapore, and our Chief Information Security Officer has outlined our efforts to minimise data access across regions. Similar to industry peers, we will continue to drive our goal of limiting the number of employees who have access to user data and the scenarios where data access is enabled. Although we already have controls in place to protect user data, we will continue to focus on adding new technologies and programs focused on global data residency, data movement, and data storage access protections worldwide”.
It’s clear that TikTok feel that they are no different to other social media platforms and claim to be protecting users data regardless of any government requests. To their credit they have also expressed a willingness to sit down with regulators and discuss user privacy and data security.
Mr Hunter said “We always welcome the opportunity to meet with policy makers to talk about TikTok, including the steps we’re taking to make it an even safer and more creative place.”
TikTok have confidence in their processes and procedures and are willing to show how much they respect the privacy of their users,highlighting just as we did this morning that their data is stored in Singapore. Last year they even released a “Transparency Report” showing the requests they had received from various official bodies.
the TikTok app does not operate in China and has not received any requests from the Chinese government for user information or to remove content
While TikTok had more to say what do you think? Are they genuine? Do they do enough to answer the questions raised this morning? Are they just the same as the other social media platforms? Let us know what you think below.
