TikTok’s global expansion stumbles as executives leave and concerns flare over data security
- David Ortiz, one of TikTok’s first key hires outside China, says his role has been eliminated amid a larger reorganisation effort
- Regulators and politicians in the US, Australia and Europe have expressed new concerns over TikTok’s data security practices
TikTok, the globally popular short video app owned by China’s ByteDance with over 1 billion users worldwide, is facing fresh challenges in its global expansion push amid the departure of key executives and renewed scrutiny over its data collection practices.
David Ortiz, the New York-based leader of TikTok’s monetisation product, wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday that his role was “being eliminated in a much larger reorganisation effort”.
Ortiz, an alumnus of cloud-based software company Salesforce and social media firm Snap, joined TikTok in 2020 as one of the Beijing-based company’s first recruits outside China to build international product management and engineering teams.
His post echoed a report on Monday by tech publication Wired that TikTok had alerted some UK and US-based employees about upcoming job cuts. Others in Europe were told to expect meetings with human resources representatives in the coming weeks, according to the report, which cited unnamed sources.
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Personnel changes have taken place at the higher levels as well. Last week, TikTok announced that Roland Cloutier would step down as global chief security officer and move to a strategic advisory role in September.