In filing countering TikTok’s suit against the federal government, the Justice Department leveled a serious allegation about user data and Chinese servers.
Amid the massive $95 billion spending package that allotted more than $60 billion in additional funds to Ukraine, a provision was included calling for the sale or otherwise outright ban of the social media app in the United States. After TikTok filed suit to block the law in May, the DOJ submitted their own filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia alleging user data on social issues was being gathered and transmitted back to China.
Reporting on the contents of the heavily redacted filing, the Associated Press detailed that the accusations that TikTok and Chinese-based parent company ByteDance were using the internal system Lark to search for users’ opinions on issues like religion and abortion.
Once collected, court documents claimed that information was stored on servers in China that were supposedly only accessible to ByteDance employees.
It was further alleged by the DOJ that the social media company utilized “heating,” a practice that promoted select videos and therefore 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 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,” the federal government had said in the court filing.
The documents further asserted, “Given TikTok’s broad reach within the United States, the capacity for China to use TikTok’s features to achieve its overarching objective to undermine American interests creates a national-security threat of immense depth and scale.”
As previously reported, the Chinese-exclusive counterpart to TikTok, Douyin, was said to promote vastly different content, especially through the use of “teenage mode” that prohibited access to less than 40 minutes a day during select hours and forced 5-second delays to prevent “doomscrolling.”
For perspective, as data showed youths around the world spent at least twice as much time on TikTok per day, former Air Force and Space Force Chief Software Officer Nicholas Chaillan had told the New York Post early in 2023, “TikTok is now one of the leading advertising platforms in the US and Europe, giving full control to the [Chinese Communist Party] to what content gets promoted and what sticks. That is probably enough to sway future elections.”
The DOJ also argued that the alleged Lark data transfers were proof that TikTok’s $1.5 billion plan to store U.S. data on servers owned and operated by Oracle, dubbed Project Texas, was not enough to satisfy national security concerns.
Meanwhile, a statement from TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek defended the platform’s use in the United States and argued, “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side. The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the 1st Amendment. As we’ve said before, the government has never put forth proof of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, once again, the government is takin this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information. We remain confident we will prevail in court.”
Our statement on the DOJ brief filed today:
“Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side. The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the First Amendment. As we’ve said before, the government has never put forth proof of…
— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) July 27, 2024
Oral arguments in the legal dispute were expected to take place in September.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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