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Malaysian Reserve
15-07-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
TikTok urgently pitches Canada security solution to avoid shutdown
TikTok is trying to talk with Canada about security solutions that would spare the popular video app from a looming order to shut operations in the country. So far, its pleas have fallen on deaf ears, said Steve de Eyre, director of TikTok's government affairs for Canada, in an interview. 'We are still looking to get to the table,' he said. TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance Ltd., started this month to freeze spending on cultural programs and sponsorships, following a November directive to close its Canadian unit, which cited national security concerns. TikTok would still be available on app stores for Canadians to use after the shutdown. 'Time is running out,' de Eyre said, though the company declined to share its deadline. TikTok has challenged the order in court. TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew wrote to Industry Minister Melanie Joly on July 2 requesting an urgent in-person meeting within the next two weeks. According to a copy of the letter seen by Bloomberg, he wrote: 'The windup process is rapidly approaching a critical juncture where, unless you intervene, TikTok will be forced to fire all of its Canadian employees' as well as halting investment and support for creators. De Eyre confirmed the contents of the letter, and said the company hasn't yet received an official response. The Industry Ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In other countries where it's faced concerns, TikTok has set up systems to fence off user data to prevent it from being sent to China. These were dubbed Project Texas in the US and Project Clover in the EU. Asked if TikTok has pitched Canada an equivalent like 'Project Maple,' de Eyre said: 'Maybe it would be Project Maple. But we need to sit down, understand the concerns that Canada has, and we want to build a solution that would provide greater data security, greater oversight and accountability where there are these concerns.' In the UK, TikTok hired a British firm to audit its data controls and protections to allay concerns. Right now, TikTok says it stores Canadian user data in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. The company said it paid C$340 million ($248 million) in Canadian tax from 2019 to 2024, employs about 350 people across Toronto and Vancouver, and has 14 million Canadian users. 'We've had people who have unfortunately left for other opportunities because of this order being out there, and we haven't been able to rehire for those roles because of the order,' de Eyre said. He argued the ban was enacted by a different government, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, 'in a different time,' and that things have changed in the US, where Donald Trump has delayed a more comprehensive order for ByteDance to sell or shut down the app. Last month Trump said he's found a buyer for the US operations. The irony of Canada's order if it goes through, de Eyre argues, is that the country loses 'the accountability of having a TikTok entity within Canada's legal jurisdiction, having employees who are directly accountable to parliament and regulators and law enforcement,' even though the app will remain available. –BLOOMBERG
Calgary Herald
14-07-2025
- Business
- Calgary Herald
TikTok Urgently Pitches Canada Security Solution to Avoid Shutdown
Article content (Bloomberg) — TikTok is trying to talk with Canada about security solutions that would spare the popular video app from a looming order to shut operations in the country. Article content So far, its pleas have fallen on deaf ears, said Steve de Eyre, director of TikTok's government affairs for Canada, in an interview. 'We are still looking to get to the table,' he said. Article content Article content TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance Ltd., started this month to freeze spending on cultural programs and sponsorships, following a November directive to close its Canadian unit, which cited national security concerns. TikTok would still be available on app stores for Canadians to use after the shutdown. Article content Article content 'Time is running out,' de Eyre said, though the company declined to share its deadline. TikTok has challenged the order in court. Article content Article content TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew wrote to Industry Minister Melanie Joly on July 2 requesting an urgent in-person meeting within the next two weeks. Article content According to a copy of the letter seen by Bloomberg, he wrote: 'The windup process is rapidly approaching a critical juncture where, unless you intervene, TikTok will be forced to fire all of its Canadian employees' as well as halting investment and support for creators. Article content De Eyre confirmed the contents of the letter, and said the company hasn't yet received an official response. The Industry Ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Article content In other countries where it's faced concerns, TikTok has set up systems to fence off user data to prevent it from being sent to China. These were dubbed Project Texas in the US and Project Clover in the EU. Article content Article content Asked if TikTok has pitched Canada an equivalent like 'Project Maple,' de Eyre said: 'Maybe it would be Project Maple. But we need to sit down, understand the concerns that Canada has, and we want to build a solution that would provide greater data security, greater oversight and accountability where there are these concerns.' Article content In the UK, TikTok hired a British firm to audit its data controls and protections to allay concerns. Article content Right now, TikTok says it stores Canadian user data in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. The company said it paid C$340 million ($248 million) in Canadian tax from 2019 to 2024, employs about 350 people across Toronto and Vancouver, and has 14 million Canadian users. Article content 'We've had people who have unfortunately left for other opportunities because of this order being out there, and we haven't been able to rehire for those roles because of the order,' de Eyre said.
NDTV
02-07-2025
- Business
- NDTV
Elon Musk's X To Deploy AI To Write Community Notes, Speed Up Fact-Checking
Elon Musk's X will start to publish Community Notes written by artificial intelligence agents, a move to increase the speed of the social network's fact-checking product and expand it to reach more people. Developers will soon be able to submit their own AI agents for review by the company. Those AI agents will write a series of practice notes behind the scenes, and if the company deems them helpful, the bot will be deployed to write notes that will appear publicly on the service. Humans will still review those AI-generated notes, and the note will only appear if people with a wide variety of viewpoints find them useful, said Keith Coleman, a product executive at X who runs the Community Notes program. That's the system in place for notes written by X users. AI notes could start to appear later this month. "They can help deliver a lot more notes faster with less work, but ultimately the decision on what's helpful enough to show still comes down to humans," Coleman said Tuesday in an interview. "So we think that combination is incredibly powerful." There are currently hundreds of notes published to X every day, Coleman said, and while he doesn't have a target for how that might change once AI is involved, there could be a "significant" increase. X first debuted a crowd-sourced fact-checking program when the company was still known as Twitter, and well before Musk's 2022 takeover. But its focus on Community Notes has increased under Musk's ownership, and has recently been adopted by other companies, including Meta Platforms Inc. and ByteDance Ltd.'s TikTok. Musk himself has said Community Notes serves as a bulwark against false information, calling it hoax kryptonite, but he is also regularly flagged by the fact-checking process for posting misleading information. Earlier this year he also suggested the system could be "gamed by governments & legacy media." Coleman said that other companies adoption of community notes is evidence that it's the best fact-checking system available. He's also hopeful that asking humans to review the AI notes before publishing them will create a "feedback loop" that will improve the bots as well. "It's a new feedback cycle," he said. "The model can be improved not just by one random human's feedback, but by feedback from a diverse audience." AI agents can be powered by any technology, Coleman said, not just Grok, the bot that was created by Musk's AI startup xAI.
NDTV
30-06-2025
- Business
- NDTV
"Have A Buyer For TikTok," Says Trump But He Won't Divulge Name
President Donald Trump said he has identified a buyer for the US operations of TikTok, the social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., but he won't provide details for two weeks. "We have a buyer for Tiktok, by the way. I think I'll need probably China approval and I think President Xi will probably do it," he said, referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in an interview on Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. "It's a group of very wealthy people." The interview, which aired Sunday, was taped on Friday. Trump earlier said he would extend for the third time a deadline for ByteDance to sell the US portions of TikTok, which would give the company 90 days beyond June 19. Congress passed a law last year requiring the divestiture, citing national security concerns. Under the law, the president was allowed to invoke one extension. Movement on a deal has largely stalled with US-China trade relations swept up in larger tensions over tariff negotiations. Before Trump announced widespread tariffs in April, a deal was reportedly close, advanced by a consortium of US investors including Oracle Corp., Blackstone Inc. and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The White House didn't respond to a request for more details on Trump's latest remarks.
Bloomberg
02-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
TikTok Fined €530 Million for Illegally Sending EU Data to China
TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. was fined €530 million ($600 million) by the European Union for illegally sending user data to China, warning the firm it didn't do enough to keep information out of reach from Chinese state services. Ireland 's Data Protection Commission, the company's main regulator in Europe, said TikTok infringed the bloc's rulebook with the data transfers and gave it six months to suspend all illegal transfers.
