- TikTok' parent company ByteDance is required to share data at the request of Chinese government, according to news reports.
- After a going down a 'TikTok rabbit hole' Joe Rogan called out the app on his podcast.
Joe Rogan slammed TikTok on his podcast after taking issue with the video-sharing app's privacy policy and terms of service on Tuesday.
On the latest episode of his podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan listed what he found in the terms of service after he "went down a TikTok rabbit hole".
"It said, 'We collect certain information about the device you use to access the platform, such as your IP address, user region.' This is really crazy," Rogan said during the episode.
"'User agent, mobile carrier, time zone settings, identifiers for advertising purpose, model of your device, the device system, network type, device IDs, your screen resolution and operating system, app and file names and types,'" he added, reading from the terms of service.
He went on to allege that TikTok even had access to users' keystrokes.
"So they're monitoring your keystrokes, which means they know every f---ing thing you type," he said.
TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance. Private businesses in China are required to share data and information with the Chinese government, Fox News reports.
In a recent leak obtained by Gizmodo, company documents encouraged TikTok employees to "downplay the parent company ByteDance, downplay the China association," among other instructions to improve TikTok's image, according to the report.
TikTok's vice president and head of public policy, Michael Beckerman, assured users that the new US Data Security (USDS) division was working to "strengthen (their) data protection policies and protocols" in a July company report.
"The creation of USDS was an important milestone in the goals we laid out in a blog post two years ago: minimizing employee access to U.S. user data and minimizing data transfers across regions – including to China," he wrote. "That access is subject to a series of robust controls, safeguards like encryption for certain data, and authorization approval protocols overseen by our U.S.-based security team," he added.
Rogan alleges that TikTok was "100 percent" created solely to access personal data. In the episode, he predicts that China will eventually gain this information from all TikTok users.
"It ends with China having all of your data," Rogan said.
TikTok representatives didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.