DOJ says TikTok sends Americans' opinions on social issues to engineers in China

In filing TikTok's lawsuit against the federal government, the Department of Justice made a serious allegation about user data and Chinese servers.

Amidst the massive $95 billion spending package that allocated more than $60 billion in additional funds to Ukraine was included a provision calling for the sale or outright ban of the social media app in the States united After TikTok filed a lawsuit to block the law in May, the DOJ filed its own filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit alleging that user data on social issues was being collecting and were transmitted to China.

Reporting on the contents of the heavily redacted archive, Associated Press detailed that allegations that TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance used the internal system Lark to seek user opinions on issues such as religion and abortion.

Once collected, court documents claimed the information was stored on servers in China that were allegedly only accessible to ByteDance employees.

In addition, the DOJ alleged that the social media company used “warming,” a practice that promoted select videos and thus allowed them to bolster potentially divisive content to sway public opinion. on issues In other words, the social media company was being accused of manipulating the reach of propaganda.

“By directing ByteDance or TikTok to covertly manipulate this algorithm, China could, for example, further its existing malign influence operations and amplify its efforts to undermine trust in our democracy and exacerbate social divisions,” the federal government had said in the court filing.

The documents further stated: “Given TikTok's broad reach in the United States, China's ability to use TikTok's features to achieve its overall goal of undermining US interests creates a threat to the national security of immense depth and scale.”

As before reportedDouyin, TikTok's exclusive Chinese counterpart, was said to promote very different content, particularly through the use of “teenage mode” that banned access for less than 40 minutes a day during selected hours and enforced delays of 5 seconds to avoid “. doomscrolling”.

For perspective, as data showed young people around the world spent at least twice as much time on TikTok per day, former Air Force and Space Force software chief Nicholas Chaillan had told the New York Post in early 2023: “TikTok is now one of the leading advertising platforms in the US and Europe, giving full control to the [Chinese Communist Party] which content is promoted and attached to. That's probably enough to influence future elections.”

The DOJ also argued that Lark's alleged data transfers were evidence that TikTok's $1.5 billion plan to store US data on servers owned and operated by Oracle, called Project Texas, was not enough to satisfy concerns of national security.

Meanwhile, a statement from TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek defended the platform's use in the United States, arguing: “Nothing in this writing changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side. Banning TikTok would silence 170 millions of Americans' voices, in violation of the 1st Amendment. As we have said before, the government has never produced evidence of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, once again, the government is taking this step unprecedented while hiding behind classified information. We remain confident that we will prevail in court.”

Our statement on the DOJ brief filed today:

“Nothing in this writing changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side. Banning TikTok would silence 170 million American voices, violating the First Amendment. As we have said before, the government has never presented evidence of…

— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) July 27, 2024

Oral arguments in the legal dispute were expected to take place in September.

Staff writer

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College, where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and seeker of truth, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and dog, and when he's not researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel ·the.

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