Amazon backtracks hours after banning TikTok for employees, calls email on ban a 'mistake'

Roughly five hours after an internal email went out to employees telling them to delete the Chinese origin app TikTok from their phones, Amazon has backtracked and has called its email about the ban a 'mistake'.

"This morning's email to some of our employees was sent in error. There is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok," Amazon emailed reporters just before 5 p.m. Eastern time. However, spokeswoman Jaci Anderson declined to answer questions about what happened.

The initial internal email, which was disseminated widely online, told employees to delete TikTok, a video app increasingly popular with young people but also the focus of intensifying national-security and geopolitical concerns because of its Chinese ownership. The email cited security risks of the app. An Amazon employee who confirmed receipt of the initial email but was not authorized to speak publicly had not seen a retraction at the time of Amazon's backtrack. The email read, "The TikTok app is no longer permitted on mobile devices that access Amazon email." To retain mobile access to company email, employees had to delete the TikTok app by the end of the day.

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TikTok faces heat 

Amazon is the second-largest U.S. private employer after Walmart, with more than 8,40,000 employees worldwide, and moving against TikTok would have escalated pressure on the app. It is banned on employee phones by the U.S. military and the company is subject to a national-security review of its merger history.

The Indian government has recently banned TikTok and other nmobile application which have Chinese origin and has given them 3 weeks time to respond on security questions. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a TV interview earlier this week said that the Trump administration is certainly looking to ban the app. Pompeo said the government remained concerned about TikTok and referred to the administration's crackdown on Chinese telecom firms Huawei and ZTE. A U.S. national-security agency has been reviewing ByteDance's purchase of TikTok's precursor, Musical.ly. Moreover, Australia is also considering a ban on the TikTok app by Chinese developers over security concerns. Several Australian legislators have expressed their concern over privacy issues and a possibility of the Chinese government having access to users' data.

After suffering losses that could be as high as $6 billion due to the ban in India, TikTok also suspended its operations in Hong Kong. TikTok's parent ByteDance reportedly has taken the action in view of the Hong Kong National security law, which imposes Chinese laws in Hong Kong. Thus, companies in Hong Kong might have to share their information with China, thus undermining user privacy and security.  

Amazon employees asked to remove TikTok from phones over 'security risks' concerns

TikTok on Amazon ban

TikTok said earlier in the day that Amazon did not notify it before sending the initial email around midday Eastern. TikTok also added, "We still do not understand their concerns, adding that the company would welcome a dialogue to address Amazon's issues."

TikTok has been trying to appease critics in the U.S. and distance itself from its Chinese roots, but finds itself caught in an increasingly sticky geopolitical web. It recently named a new CEO, former Disney executive Kevin Mayer, which experts said could help it navigate U.S. regulators.

TikTok says it's stopping its operations in Hong-Kong, after India bans China-based app

Amazon and US government

Meanwhile, privacy groups say TikTok has been violating children's privacy, even after the Federal Trade Commission fined the company in 2019 for collecting personal information from children without their parents' consent. Amazon may have been concerned about a Chinese-owned app's access to employee data, said Susan Ariel Aaronson, a professor at George Washington University and data governance and national-security expert.

China, according to the U.S. government, regularly steals U.S. intellectual property. Part of Amazon's motivation with the ban, now apparently reversed, may also have been political, Aaronson said, since Amazon doesn't want to alienate the Trump administration. Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, are frequent targets of President Donald Trump. Bezos personally owns The Washington Post, which Trump has referred to as fake news whenever it publishes unfavorable stories about him.

Last year, Amazon sued the U.S. government, saying that Trump's personal vendetta against Amazon, Bezos and the Post, led it to lose a USD 10 billion cloud-computing contract with the Pentagon to rival Microsoft. Meanwhile, federal regulators as well as Congress are pursuing antitrust investigations at Amazon as well as other tech giants.

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(with PTI inputs)