TikTok’s world chief safety officer (CSO), Roland Cloutier, is stepping down as the corporate transitions to utilizing Oracle’s US-based servers to retailer Individuals’ knowledge (through The Wall Road Journal). The corporate shared an inner memo concerning the shift in a put up on its newsroom, which states Cloutier will assume an advisory function, with TikTok’s head of safety danger, vendor, and shopper assurance, Kim Albarella, taking on quickly.
“With our current announcement about knowledge administration modifications within the US, it’s time for me to transition from my function as International Chief Safety Officer right into a strategic advisory function specializing in the enterprise impression of safety and belief applications, working immediately with Shou, Dingkun and different senior leaders,” Cloutier writes within the memo. Cloutier, who has been with TikTok since 2020, will formally step down from his place on September 2nd.
In June, TikTok introduced that it had began routing US customers’ knowledge to Oracle servers in an try and quell fears that China — the place TikTok’s mother or father firm, ByteDance, is predicated — has unbridled entry to this data. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and ByteDance vice chairman of know-how Dingkun Hong say the change comes as a approach to “reduce issues concerning the safety of consumer knowledge within the US,” but in addition “modifications the scope of the International Chief Safety Officer (CSO) function.”
A TikTok spokeswoman informed the WSJ that Cloutier wasn’t concerned in managing TikTok’s new division devoted to the dealing with of US consumer knowledge. She additionally defined that this organizational shift has been within the works months earlier than US politicians turned up the warmth on TikTok.
For years, TikTok has been scrutinized over its ties to the China-based ByteDance, with some US officers accusing the app of siphoning Individuals’ knowledge to the Chinese language authorities. Final month, BuzzFeed Information launched a report that claims TikTok staff in China “repeatedly” accessed US customers’ knowledge from at the least September 2021 to January 2022.
In response to the report, a gaggle of Republican senators wrote a letter to TikTok that questioned the validity of the corporate’s testimony on knowledge privateness throughout a listening to that befell final October. TikTok responded to those issues earlier this month, as soon as once more reiterating its plans to work with Oracle to “absolutely safeguard consumer knowledge.”