Anurag Kumar
TikTok announced on Tuesday that Eric Han, its head of US trust and safety, will leave the company on May 12, leaving the popular short-form video app without a key executive as it battles the threat of a ban in the United States.
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, has already been banned from government-issued phones in countries such as Canada and Australia due to concerns that the Chinese government may be able to access user data or manipulate the content displayed on the popular app. There are also demands from some U.S. lawmakers to ban the app nationwide.
TikTok has maintained for a long time that it has never shared data with the Chinese government and would refuse to do so if requested.
Han, who joined TikTok in 2019, oversaw initiatives such as enhancing content moderation and decreasing election misinformation. In an effort to alleviate security concerns, he oversaw trust and safety for the company’s US Data Security (USDS), a division created to host US data in the country on Oracle-controlled servers.
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His impending departure comes as TikTok prepares to host an advertiser presentation in New York on Thursday.
The Verge was the first to disclose Han’s impending departure.
