Leadership vacuum at TikTok Australia as US ban looms
TikTok has opted against replacing its most senior Australian executive despite mounting political and regulatory pressure on both sides of the Pacific.
Viral short form social video platform TikTok has opted against replacing its most senior Australian executive despite mounting political and regulatory pressure on its local operations amid a federal privacy probe and looming US ban.
The move to not fill the general manager role in Australia, confirmed by a TikTok spokesperson, comes as calls mount for Australia to follow the lead of its key security ally, the US, which effectively moved to ban the app last week. It also comes as the federal privacy regulator confirmed to Capital Brief that it had “significantly progressed” its probe into the company, which is owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance.
Capital Brief broke the news in February that Lee Hunter, then TikTok's Australian general manager, had told associates he would leave the short form video sharing app imminently. He departed the company shortly after the report was published.
Hunter, who had led the company in Australia since May 2020 and previously worked at Google and YouTube, had served as the public face of TikTok in its defence against concerns its app posed a national security threat to Australia.
