Report: TikTok’s efforts to silo US data are ‘largely cosmetic’

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Since 2022, TikTok has undertaken a massive, expensive effort to silo off its US operations — and American users’ data — from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. TikTok has described the corporate restructuring, which it dubbed Project Texas, as “an unprecedented initiative dedicated to making every American on TikTok feel safe, with confidence that their data is secure and the platform is free from outside influence.” Several former employees, however, told Fortune that Project Texas is instead “largely cosmetic” and that they and their colleagues continued to work closely with Beijing-based ByteDance executives after the plan’s implementation.

One major aspect of Project Texas — so named because Oracle, TikTok’s “technology…