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A hot potato: The war between the US and TikTok has opened another front. In a filing with a federal appeals court, the Department of Justice alleges that TikTok has been collecting sensitive information about user views on socially divisive topics. The DOJ speculated that the Chinese government could use this data to sow disruption in the US and cast suspicion on its democratic processes. TikTok has made several overtures to the US to create trust in its privacy and data controls, but it has also been reported that the service at one time tracked users who watched LGBTQ content.
The US Justice Department alleges that TikTok collected sensitive data on US users regarding contentious issues such as abortion, religion and gun control, raising concerns about privacy and potential manipulation by the Chinese government. This information was reportedly gathered through an internal communication tool called Lark.
Lark is similar to other workplace messaging platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams, allowing employees to communicate and share information. However, it also collects a wealth of user data, some of it very personal, such as photos, country of residence, internet protocol address, and device and user IDs – as well as some users' potentially illegal content, such as child sexual abuse materials.
Government lawyers made their case in documents filed late Friday to the federal appeals court in Washington. It alleged that the information collected by Lark wound up being stored on Chinese servers and accessible to employees in China. They warn that the Chinese government could potentially instruct ByteDance to manipulate TikTok's algorithm to use this data to promote certain narratives or suppress others, in order to influence public opinion on social issues and undermine trust in the US' democratic processes.
Manipulating the algorithm could also be used to amplify content that aligns with Chinese state narratives, or downplay content that contradicts those narratives, thereby shaping the national conversation in a way that serves Chinese interests.
"By directing ByteDance or TikTok to covertly manipulate that 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," according to the brief.
There is evidence that TikTok collected sensitive information about users in the past. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the company had tracked users who watched LGBTQ content through a dashboard that, according to ByteDance, has since been deleted.
The brief is the latest salvo in an ongoing legal battle in which the Biden administration has directed ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok or face a potential ban in the US, where the app has around 170 million users.
TikTok has challenged the constitutionality of the government's actions against it, arguing that the government's measures infringe upon the First Amendment rights of its users. It has also said that the allegations lack substantial evidence and that the user data the company maintains does not pose the national security risks that US officials have claimed.
The company has also made overtures to the US government in order to keep operating in the country, including the offer of a "kill switch" in 2022 that would have given the US government the power to shut down the platform at its sole discretion if certain rules were not followed. TikTok claims that US officials stopped any substantive negotiations after the proposal was made.
TikTok has also initiated Project Texas, a $1.5 billion effort to safeguard US user data by transferring it to Oracle servers based in the US. However, the effectiveness of this initiative is under scrutiny by federal officials.