In a fresh broadside against one of the world’s most popular technology companies, the Justice Department late Friday accused TikTok of harnessing the capability to gather bulk information on users based on views on divisive social issues like gun control, abortion and religion.
Government lawyers wrote in documents filed to the federal appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance used an internal web-suite system called Lark to enable TikTok employees to speak directly with ByteDance engineers in China.
TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about U.S. users, information that has wound up being stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees in China, federal officials said.
One of Lark’s internal search tools, the filing states, permits ByteDance and TikTok employees in the U.S. and China to gather information on users’ content or expressions, including views on sensitive topics, such as abortion or religion. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported TikTok had tracked users who watched LGBTQ content through a dashboard the company said it had since deleted.
No tech company should have the power to essentially read users’ minds and dominate politics through propaganda. If it takes the TikTok and the CCP for the US to finally regulate against this, so be it.
The US isnt regulating against it though. Its trying to ban 1 company from existing, or at least remove it ownership. Currently, we are fine with all the other companies doing this.
There are general privacy bills that get put forward, but they are not viable.
The new law is another thing, but the fact that these arguments are being put into case law now is a good thing.