TikTok Employees Shrug Off the US Election
WiredTikTok is one of the tech companies that could be most impacted by the outcome of the US elections. “There’s little you can do as an ordinary employee, and everyone thinks that way, so the result is business as usual.” WIRED talked to half a dozen employees at TikTok and its parent company ByteDance on the condition of anonymity, and all of them report very little, if any, discussion of US elections or politics among their ranks. While outsiders speculate about the app’s potential demise, US-based TikTok employees say discussions of the ban happen more with their international counterparts or with non-ByteDance friends. Very occasionally, some of us might say that maybe it’s time to jump ship, but those discussions rarely come up,” the TikTok product manager says. Most recently, Trump said in a September campaign video that “for all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump.” Yet he didn’t make saving TikTok a core talking point on his campaign stops, and people aren’t sure if he would uphold his latest opinion should he be elected.