TikTok Pledged to Protect U.S. Data. $1.5 Billion Later, It’s Struggling.

TikTok said it has spent $1.5 billion building an operation intended to convince U.S. lawmakers that the popular video-sharing app is safe.

TikTok executives publicly promised to voluntarily wall-off American user data and bring in engineers and third parties to certify the app’s algorithm delivered content without interference from China, where its parent company, ByteDance, is located.

So far, TikTok is struggling to live up to those promises.

The special stand-alone unit, code-named Project Texas, oversees American data and content recommendations on its app.

In it, managers sometimes instruct workers to share data with colleagues in other parts of the company and with ByteDance workers without going through official channels, according to current and former employees and internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. That data sometimes includes private information such as a user’s email, birth date and IP address.

Meanwhile, ByteDance workers in China update TikTok’s algorithm so frequently that Project Texas employees struggle to check every change, and fear they won’t catch problems if there are any, the people said.

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