TikTok owner ByteDance pushed a pro-China agenda to Americans, say former employees

Controversy over supposed pro-China messaging in apps from TikTok owner Bytedance continues to grow. Tales are emerging relating to a now shelved app called TopBuzz. Former employees have spoken to BuzzFeed, making claims of both pro-China content promotion and forms of censorship elsewhere.

Staying on message

Buzzfeed claims that former employees who worked on the TopBuzz app were instructed to place “specific pieces of pro-China messaging in the app”. There are claims of China-centric content being pinned to the top of the app, including videos about travel, as well as one about moving a start-up to China. The former employees say they had to take screenshots to prove that they had pinned the content.

Elsewhere, there are claims that certain types of content was being censored. This includes alleged removal of Hong Kong protest coverage, for example. Other “edge case” content resulted in liaisons with the Beijing team to decide its fate. There’s also references to outright removal of content related to Winnie the Pooh memes.

Bytedance didn’t respond to comments related to censorship, though the embattled organisation did object strongly to claims about pro-China messaging. There’s also additional claims of everything from scraped content to mass deletions of fake accounts “degrading the user experience“.

Rules and regulations

Travel videos and clips of pandas may sound harmless. But this is still a news issue due to fears of regulatory concerns. Apps and businesses walk a tightrope of concerns where any connection exists to a nation which may be at odds with the one they’re trying to do business in. It wasn’t so long ago that former US President Donald Trump tried (and ultimately failed) to force a TikTok ban. More than anything else, this attempt may have made issues of compliance in this realm front and center in the public eye.

This public pressure isn’t going away anytime soon when members of the FCC are demanding Google and Apple remove TikTok from their stores. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr insists the company “can’t be trusted” with information given by users.

TikTok is not just another video app.
That’s the sheep’s clothing.

It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.

I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn

— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022

Of leaks and downplaying

It’s not just bad news for the now defunct app. There’s now also word of internal TikTok documents related to questions of ByteDance, China, and AI:

SCOOP: I got hold of internal documents advising TikTok staff how to respond to press or creator questions.

Three of the first four lines in the Master Messaging document? “Downplay ByteDance, downplay China, downplay AI.”

By me for @Gizmodo https://t.co/t7HcPhRgdV

— Chris Stokel-Walker (@stokel) July 27, 2022

The main counterpoints referencing these subjects include:

• TikTok not being available in China
• Not sharing user data with the Chinese government, and refusing to do so if asked
• Citing the “measures in place” to “significantly reduce access to user data”.

There’s many other unrelated topics in the document, including dealing with questions related to user demographics, user data generally, and children spending money on livestreaming gifts.

Given the non-stop debate over issues related to China, and the fairly restrictive guidance contained within for answering questions, it’s likely this is where the focus will remain over the coming days as the document continues to be analysed.