Docs: a China-based ByteDance audit team planned to collect TikTok location data of US citizens who had never had an employment relationship with the company (Emily Baker-White/Forbes)

Emily Baker-White / Forbes:
Sources: ByteDance launched audits into TikTok’s global CSO Roland Cloutier before he quit, hamstringing his efforts to build a robust security team  —  Roland Cloutier, a U.S. Air Force veteran and former law enforcement officer, stepped down as TikTok’s Global Chief Security Officer …

Emily Baker-White / Forbes:
Web novel apps backed by ByteDance and Tencent are running hundreds of Facebook and Instagram ads showing sexual assault, violent erotica, and acts of self-harm  —  Some of the ads include descriptions of sexual violence, paired with images of battered women and photos of male fitness influencers, which were used without permission.

Emily Baker-White / Forbes:
Internal meetings: TikTok employed a two-tiered moderation system with “more lenient” treatment for influencers, celebrities, and other VIPs with 5M+ followers  —  Content from accounts with more than 5 million followers has been routed through a designated, “more lenient” …

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Texas AG sues Google for allegedly using features in Photos, Assistant, and Nest devices to collect facial- and voice-recognition data without proper consent  —  State alleges tech giant didn’t obtain user consent for biometric-data use  —  The Texas attorney general sued Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG 2.32%▲ …

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Unsealed court docs in a privacy user profiling suit against Meta show that apps from Zynga, Yahoo, and others had extensive access to users’ friends’ data  —  It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up… The scandal-hit company formerly known as Facebook has fought for over four years to keep …

Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Uber reaches a $10M settlement with the City of Chicago for listing restaurants in Uber Eats and Postmates without consent and charging excess commissions  —  Uber has agreed to a $10 million settlement with the City of Chicago for listing local restaurants in the Uber Eats …