As its future hangs in the balance, TikTok tries to keep advertisers on its side

By Krystal Scanlon

Think TikTok is based in China? Think again. Maybe you’re a marketer who believes decisions about TikTok are made in Beijing. You’d swear that the app was inextricably linked to the Chinese government. Wrong on both counts.

In fact, the whole idea that TikTok is really spyware is nothing more than a myth, according to the app. And it wants marketers to know it. So much so that TikTok execs have been meeting up with marketers to try and dispel the so-called myths about the app’s ties to China — myths that were brought into sharp focus last week when CEO Shou Chew testified before U .S. lawmakers.

Call it damage control.

And there’s a lot to control. Some 16 myths, to be precise. All of them are featured below in the document TikTok ad execs have been sharing with marketers following the congressional hearing.

For those readers who are short on time, here’s the cliffsnotes:

Ownership

There have long been concerns about TikTok’s ownership – namely that ByteDance is a Chinese company, and that company has ties to the Chinese Government. TikTok states that while ByteDance was indeed founded by Chinese entrepreneurs, around 60% of it is owned by institutional investors: Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group – so it’s predominantly a private equity-backed business nowadays. And let’s not forget its five-strong board; three out of five of which are U.S. based, with the remaining two residing in Singapore and Hong Kong, respectively.

Ties to Chinese Government

It’s well known that to operate news and information products within mainland China, media licenses are required, and the Chinese Government will legally own 1% of those entities. But TikTok doesn’t operate in mainland China, only its Chinese counterpart Douyin does, so those rules don’t apply.

Content

TikTok has always positioned itself as an entertainment app, meaning the content is predominantly UGC — not content created by the Chinese Government. And given that TikTok can’t be accessed in China, it makes sense that the app’s content moderation takes place elsewhere, by the platform’s U.S. and Ireland Trust and Safety teams, which oversee the content for the US and Europe, respectively.

Data use (or abuse)

Since Trump’s loud call to ban the app back in 2020, TikTok has touted Project Texas as its way of appeasing concerns about how user data is managed. And even at the hearing, Project Texas was used as a response to answer numerous repeated questions from Congress. But since June 2022, 100% of U.S. data has been routed to Oracle and USDU infrastructure, which is managed by, you guessed it, Americans, in the U.S..

Surveillance

There’s an ongoing narrative that the app has the capability to spy on U.S. citizens. This was made clear when it was announced last month that the FBI and DOJ are investigating ByteDance’s use of TikTok to spy on Forbes’ journalists.

Here’s a copy of the full myth-buster document:

TikTok_Myth-vs.-Fact Download

The fact that such a document exists says everything there …read more

Source:: Digiday