TikTok has spent the past three years trying to convince U.S. lawmakers that it can operate in the United States independently of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. But after a series of recent personnel changes, some employees aren't so sure.
Since the beginning of the year, a number of senior executives have moved from ByteDance to TikTok, taking some of the top positions in the revenue-generating business of the popular video-sharing app. Some of the executives were transferred to the United States from ByteDance's Beijing headquarters.
These executives from ByteDance are responsible for TikTok's advertising business, human resources, monetization, business marketing, and products related to advertising and e-commerce initiatives. Some executives have brought teams from Beijing.
According to current and former TikTok employees familiar with the discussions, the moves raised concerns among some of TikTok's U.S.-based employees, who complained internally to top TikTok executives. These TikTok employees said they were concerned that the appointments showed ByteDance had more influence in TikTok's operations than TikTok had publicly disclosed.
Earlier this year, a TikTok employee alerted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's staff about the changes at the top of the company in hopes that the Republican team would investigate, according to people familiar with the matter. TikTok has an office in Texas.
A spokesman for Cruz did not respond to a request for comment.
A TikTok spokesman said the company was not downplaying its relationship with ByteDance. In a large, global organization, it's not uncommon for employees to work for different products or in multiple locations throughout their careers, he says.
TikTok has faced scrutiny from U.S. authorities over concerns that the Chinese government could pressure the company to hand over user data or use the app for propaganda purposes. TikTok has repeatedly denied these concerns.
In 2020, the Trump administration tried to ban TikTok downloads in the United States. The Biden administration had asked TikTok's Chinese owners to sell their shares. TikTok has fought demands from both administrations while trying to demonstrate its independence from its Chinese owners. Jeff Yass, a financier and influential Republican political donor who holds a large stake in ByteDance through his Susquehanna International Group, has also been working to resist the United States ban. "The idea of banning TikTok goes against everything I believe," Mr Yass told The Wall Street Journal.
TikTok has set up regional headquarters outside China, including in Culver City, Calif., and a partnership with Oracle called Project Texas to store user data in the United States and monitor the app's algorithms. Part of the Texas project's pitch to lawmakers is that the arrangement would allow TikTok's business to be independent of ByteDance.
TikTok's TV ads portray typical Americans in an attempt to distinguish it from its Chinese roots. One of the ads tells the story of Patriotic Kenny. Kenny, an 80-year-old war veteran, was stranded after his electric mobility scooter, emblazoned with an American flag, broke down. The AD said TikTok users rallied to help him raise money to buy a new mobility scooter.
In 2021, TikTok sent instructions to some new hires, specifying how to distance TikTok from ByteDance in the media, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
"Downplay parent company Bytedance," one document reads. "Downplay the China connection," reads another document. Gizmodo reported on the documents last year.
A TikTok spokesman said the instructions were never company policy.
Bytedance has taken a less intrusive approach in some areas of TikTok. In TikTok's profitable business, U.S. employees began taking on more responsibility and providing more input into the app's strategic decisions in 2021.
At an all-hands meeting in 2021, when employees asked executives how TikTok's separation from China could work, managers responded that they planned to improve the decision-making skills of employees in the United States, according to current and former employees.
Previous ByteDance executives have been involved from time to time, according to current and former employees, but for these money-making businesses, ByteDance's role was usually to approve budgets and advise on products. That changed earlier this year, TikTok employees said, when those new executives began moving from ByteDance to TikTok and ByteDance became more involved in TikTok's strategic issues.
The TikTok spokesperson said that the company's decisions are made by the heads of each business unit and that TikTok employees have not lost their autonomy.
Some TikTok employees complained to managers after watching the company's chief executive, Zhizi Zhou, testify before Congress in March about the app's ties to China. They said they felt Mr. Chow's remarks before Congress misrepresented TikTok's relationship with ByteDance.
A TikTok spokesman said Zhou's testimony did not downplay TikTok's relationship with ByteDance.
In one conversation, Mr. Zhou talked about TikTok's reliance on the expertise of Chinese employees for certain engineering projects, according to TikTok employees, but did not mention ByteDance's impact on the company's strategy. Some TikTok employees believe Mr. Zhou was evasive when asked by a member of Congress whether TikTok was a Chinese company. Chow replied to the MP: "I often discuss this question with others, what kind of company does a global enterprise belong to?"
It is unclear whether TikTok has responded to the complaints. A spokesperson said TikTok has an internal process through which employees can file complaints with HR. He said that while major projects and investments are coordinated with ByteDance, TikTok's strategy is run by its own employees and the parent company is not involved.
The ByteDance executives who now work at TikTok play a pivotal role in determining how TikTok is run and profitable. Qing Lan, an executive who had worked at TikTok for nearly five years, took over a division of TikTok in May that focuses on small and medium-sized businesses that place ads on the platform. The unit is on track to generate nearly 20% of TikTok's AD revenue this year, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. TikTok is a sister app in China.
Sun, meanwhile, oversees human resources for most of TikTok's money-making operations. Elyse Zheng is now in charge of TikTok's monetization strategy. Both worked at ByteDance for several years and currently hold senior positions at TikTok.
Some of the most high-profile U.S. employees have left, including TikTok COO V Pappas, who left in recent months. Chou's chief of staff, Adam Presser, took over many of Pappas's responsibilities and became TikTok's new chief operating officer.
The changes have prompted a joke in TikTok's offices: Employees say TikTok is solving a problem owned by ByteDance, which is based in China, by moving it to the United States. They noted that a large ByteDance office recently opened in SAN Jose, California.
TikTok has also integrated parts of its team under new executives from ByteDance, a reorganization that has confused employees, especially because TikTok doesn't share organizational charts with employees. A TikTok spokesman said employees were told when they joined the company that there was no organizational chart.
Cultural issues also frustrate employees. Employees on the SAN Jose product team were recently told they needed to work 12 hours a day to get a satisfactory rating because they were being compared to Chinese employees who worked longer hours, according to current and former employees with knowledge of the situation. A TikTok spokeswoman said it wasn't company policy.
Other employees said they struggled in meetings because Chinese had become the default language on some teams in the United States, even though Liang Rubo, Bytedance's chief executive, had told employees internally that the company would hold meetings in English.