Former Chinese diplomat worked on TikTok content policy, says report

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’d previously worked at 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