Justice Department accuses TikTok of gathering American user data on social

The Justice Department alleges TikTok is gathering information on U.S. users and their views on social issues, including gun control, abortion and religion, to send to engineers in China.

According to documents filed with the federal appeals court in Washington, the DOJ claims TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, used Lark, an internal web-suite system, to allow TikTok employees to talk directly with ByteDance engineers in China, the Associated Press reported.

TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about U.S. users, and this information has been stored on Chinese servers and is accessible to ByteDance employees in China, according to the U.S. government.

One of Lark’s internal search tools allows ByteDance and TikTok employees in the U.S. and China to collect data on users’ content or stances on certain social issues. TikTok was previously revealed to have tracked users who watched LGBTQ+ content through a dashboard the company said has since been deleted, The Wall Street Journal reported last year.

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The Justice Department alleges that TikTok is gathering information on U.S. users and their views on social issues, including gun control, abortion and religion, to send to engineers in China. (Photo Illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The latest court documents come ahead of the government’s legal battle in which it seeks to defend the potential U.S. ban of the video sharing social media platform. President Biden signed a bipartisan bill in April that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok or else the platform would face a ban in the U.S. starting in January.

Congressional lawmakers and administration officials expressed concerns over alleged national security threats and over allegations the platform’s algorithm was feeding U.S. users Chinese propaganda.

“’Intelligence reporting further demonstrates that ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to (Chinese government) demands to censor content outside of China,” senior U.S. intelligence official Casey Blackburn wrote in a filing backing the government’s arguments.

The DOJ claimed there is potential “covert content manipulation” by the Chinese government, arguing the platform’s algorithm could be designed to dictate what content users are shown.

“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 filing said.

The department said its fears are more than theoretical and that TikTok and ByteDance employees have a history of engaging in “heating,” which means certain videos are promoted to reach more users. This feature allows TikTok to curate popular content and disseminate it to a…