An icon of the video-sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphone in Mapletown, Pennsylvania, on February 28, 2023.
Matt Slocum/AP
hide title
Switch title
Matt Slocum/AP
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department late Friday launched a new onslaught against one of the world’s most popular tech companies, accusing TikTok of harvesting troves of user information based on views on divisive social issues such as gun control, abortion and religion. Ability.
Government lawyers wrote in a brief to a federal appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance use an internal network suite system called Lark that allows TikTok employees to communicate directly with ByteDance. Beat chatting with engineers in China.
Federal officials said TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about U.S. users, which ended up being stored on servers in China and accessible to ByteDance employees in China.
One of Lark’s internal search tools allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect information about user content or expression, including views on sensitive topics such as abortion or religion, the filing said. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok tracked users who viewed LGBTQ content through a dashboard that the company said it had removed.
The new court filings are the government’s first major defense in a continuing legal battle over the future of the popular social media platform, used by more than 170 million Americans. The company could face a ban within months if it doesn’t sever its relationship with Bitbeat under a law signed by President Joe Biden in April.
The measure passed with bipartisan support after lawmakers and government officials raised concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data or influence public opinion to support Beijing’s interests by manipulating algorithms in user feeds. .
The U.S. Department of Justice has sternly warned the Chinese government of the possibility of so-called “covert content manipulation,” saying the algorithm may be designed to shape the content users receive.
“By instructing ByteDance or TikTok to covertly manipulate the algorithm, China could further its existing malign influence operations and increase efforts to undermine trust in our democracy and exacerbate social divisions,” the brief said.
They said the concerns were more than theoretical, with TikTok and ByteDance employees allegedly engaging in a practice known as “heating,” which involves promoting certain videos to gain a certain number of views. While this capability allows TikTok to curate popular content and distribute it more widely, U.S. officials believe it can also be used for nefarious purposes.
Justice Department officials asked the court to allow a confidential version of their legal brief, which the companies cannot obtain.
TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said in a statement that nothing in the redacted brief “changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side.”
“A TikTok ban would silence the voices of 170 million Americans and violate the First Amendment,” Haurek said. “As we have said before, the administration has never presented evidence for its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, the government is once again taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information and we remain confident we will prevail in court.
In a redacted version of the court filing, the Justice Department said another tool triggered content suppression based on the use of certain words. Some of the tool’s policies apply to ByteDance’s users in China, where the company operates a similar app called Douyin, which follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.
But Justice Department officials said other policies may apply to TikTok users outside China. Officials said TikTok is investigating whether these policies exist and whether they were used in the United States in or around 2022.
The administration cited the Lark transfer as an example of why federal officials don’t believe Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and maintained by tech giant Oracle, is enough to protect against state Security Question.
In its legal challenge to the law, TikTok has relied heavily on the argument that a potential ban violates the First Amendment because it prohibits the app from continuing to publish speech unless it goes through a complex divestment process Attract new owners. It also believes that divestment will change the discourse on the platform because the new social platform will lack the algorithms that drive its success.
In its response, the Justice Department argued that TikTok did not raise any valid free speech claim, said the law addressed national security concerns but did not target protected speech, and argued that China and ByteDance, as foreign entities, were not subject to the first Amendment protection.
TikTok has also argued that U.S. law discriminates against viewpoints, citing statements from some lawmakers criticizing what they see as the platform’s anti-Israel leanings during the Gaza war.
Justice Department officials disputed that argument, saying the law reflected their ongoing concerns that China could weaponize technology to harm U.S. national security. They said the requirement that companies controlled by Beijing hand over sensitive data to the government would make it difficult for them to do so. This concern has become more serious. Under its current operating structure, TikTok needs to respond to these needs, they said.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for September.
