(Bloomberg) -- A former Chinese government official decided what content should be allowed on TikTok, the Financial Times reported, citing two people close to the short-video app company.
- Cai Zheng ran ByteDance's global content policy team in Beijing until early this year. He was previously working in China's embassy in Tehran, the FT said, citing a deleted LinkedIn profile.
- Cai joined ByteDance in 2018 and wrote guidelines for what videos were acceptable on TikTok and other apps including Helo and Vigo Video.
- TikTok told FT that Cai wasn't involved in developing policies, noting that he worked on regional and local teams on localization of early content policies.
- ByteDance told the newspaper it was “not a consideration in hiring Zheng that his previous role was in the public sector, and there were no conversations with government in the hiring process.”
- Cai couldn't be reached by FT for comment.
- The former diplomat was transferred from the content policy role since January this year, the people told the paper, and his role has not since been filled.
- ByteDance told the FT that Cai had decided to move to its gaming team.
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