Chinese-Owned TikTok Will Open A ‘Transparency Center’ To Assuage Privacy Concerns

TikTok, the newly emergent social media app owned by a Chinese billionaire, will open a so-called “Transparency Center” in Los Angeles where outside experts will be able to see how the company moderates content. The facility is an attempt to stem fears in the U.S. over how the app curates itself and collects data.

TikTok plans to open the Transparency Center in early May. The company says that the center will focus first on content moderation and later expand to shed a light on its source code—the programing at the heart of every tech company—as well as data privacy and security.

Importantly, though, it’s not clear who those experts will be or how they’ll be selected.

“We expect the Transparency Center to operate as a forum where observers will be able to provide meaningful feedback on our practices,” TikTok general manager Vanessa Pappas writes in a blog post this morning. “Our landscape and industry is rapidly evolving, and we are aware that our systems, policies and practices are not flawless, which is why we are committed to constant improvement.”

U.S. government officials have lately turned their attention to TikTok, which has quickly amassed about 24 million active daily users. Federal authorities have launched a national security review of TikTok, while some military branches have banned their forces from using the app on government-issued phones. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has gone as far as to call for a total U.S. ban.

Even before announcing the Transparency Center, TikTok has moved to meet those concerns, publishing its first transparency report in December and publicizing its hiring of an ADP executive as its chief information security officer. The company has said it doesn’t and won’t share U.S. data with the Chinese government, but a 2017 Chinese law requires ByteDance, the TikTok parent company run by billionaire Zhang Yiming, to work with the Chinese government on national intelligence operations if asked.