The attempts to “ban” Tik Tok floating around U.S. Congress are censorial nonsense posing as a bespoke national security crisis, a freakout over America’s deadwood social media being supplanted by new and foreign competitors. That said, the people running Tik Tok are among the most evil corporate psychopaths this side of Dow Chemical’s pension rolls. In addition to its abuses of staff (one London boss denounced maternity leave) and other scandals, The Financial Times now reports that one of its journalists has been kept under surveillance by ByteDance, Tik Tok’s parent company.
Two members of staff in the US and two in China gained access to the IP addresses and other personal data of FT journalist Cristina Criddle, to work out if she was in the proximity of any ByteDance employees, the company said. However, the company failed to find any leaks. A BuzzFeed journalist and a number of users connected to the reporters through their TikTok accounts were also targeted. Since June, the FT has run a series of stories led by Criddle which revealed dozens of workers had left TikTok’s London office since the beginning of this year, with some reporting working 12 hours a day or being demoted after taking leave. Some staff have also described a “kill list” of colleagues that the company wanted to force out of its London office.
The good news is there will be no ruins to value.
