V Pappas, TikTok’s chief operating officer and top U.S.-based executive, is leaving after nearly five years, setting up a leadership transition for the Chinese-owned video-sharing company at a pivotal time in its most important market.
In notes to employees, Pappas and TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew said the operating chief was leaving to pursue unspecified entrepreneurial ambitions and would remain a strategic adviser to the company.
Pappas presided over a stretch of extremely rapid growth and tumult, as it vaulted ahead to become one of the most popular social-media apps in the U.S., while also contending with constant controversy, mainly over concerns around its ownership by Beijing-based ByteDance. Pappas’s announcement comes at a time when TikTok has faced a new round of intense pressure to convince U.S. lawmakers that its user data and algorithm aren’t subject to Chinese law.
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