TikTok promises to stop reading clipboard content on iOS

TikTok has promised to discontinue a feature that allows the app to continuously access copied text on the clipboard. According to parent company ByteDance, this is an anti-spam measure.

TikTok was supposed to stop a few months ago, but has not yet done so, reports the British newspaper The Telegraph. The behavior came to light with the first beta of iOS 14, which notifies you when an app pastes text from the clipboard. That turned out to happen at TikTok after every space or after every punctuation mark.

According to TikTok parent company ByteDance, it is a measure to prevent spam by users who enter a certain text on a Mac and then repeatedly paste it into comments under TikTok videos. That claim is supported because the app only reads the clipboard in the text field of the comments, but not in the search box, for example.

TikTok is far from the only app that regularly reads the clipboard, as it turned out this week. Plants vs Zombies Heroes, Prompt and Zero also did the same, writes The Telegraph. Other apps and games have done that in the past, but have stopped doing so in recent months.