TikTok user data from the two journalists, who worked for the Financial Times and BuzzFeed, was accessed while ByteDance employees were investigating potential employee leaks to the press, according to the company.“The individuals involved misused their authority to obtain access to TikTok user data,” TikTok CEO Shou Chew said in his email to employees, according to an excerpt of the email reviewed by CNN.The criticism ramped up earlier this year after a BuzzFeed News report said some US user data has been repeatedly accessed from China, and cited one employee who allegedly said that “everything is seen in China.” TikTok, for its part, has confirmed US user data can be accessed by some employees in China, but the company says that a US-based security team decides who can access US user data from China.A spokesperson for BuzzFeed said in a statement to CNN that it is “deeply disturbed” by the disclosure, calling it a “blatant disregard for the privacy and rights of journalists as well as TikTok users.”“It’s even more troubling that this comes in the wake of a series of reports by BuzzFeed News that exposed major issues within its parent company, from employees accessing American users’ data from China to ByteDance’s attempts to push pro-China messaging to Americans,” the BuzzFeed spokesperson said.More than a dozen states, including Maryland, South Dakota and Texas, have announced bans in recent weeks of TikTok for state employees on government-issued devices, and a small but growing number of universities are also blocking access to TikTok on school-owned devices or WiFi networks."