TikTok has denied allegations made by finance magazine Forbes that plans were made to use its app to track the locations of an unnamed American citizen.
It tweeted: “TikTok has never been used to "target" any members of the US government, activists, public figures or journalists, nor do we serve them a different content experience than other users.”
Forbes reported that TikTok’s parent company, Chinese-based ByteDance, had planned to use data collected from the app on the location of the citizen.
ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control team, responsible for investigating potential employee misconduct, is alleged to have made the plans.
In the series of tweets, TikTok accused Forbes of lacking “both rigour and journalistic integrity.”
TikTok admits to collecting approximate location information but spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said this was to “help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behaviour".
She also explained that precise GPS location data is not collected from US users, arguing that the suggestions made in the Forbes report could not be realistically carried out.
TikTok added that “any use of internal audit resources as alleged by Forbes would be grounds for immediate dismissal of company personnel”.