US claims TikTok shipped personal data to China – very personal data
Department's views emerged in a filing from the US government in response to attempts by TikTok and its parent company ByteDance to strike down laws that force a sale of the platform's stateside operations – and closure if that can't be arranged.
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DoJ alleges "significant amounts of restricted US user data (including but not limited to personally identifiable information)" was shared over Lark"
It gets worse: the filing claims "Lark contained multiple internal search tools that had been developed and run by China-based ByteDance engineers for scraping TikTok user data, including US user data."
Those tools allowed collection of "bulk user information based on the user's content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion." The results could be viewed in China.
The filing also alleges that TikTok tools allow for "triggering of the suppression of content on the platform based on the user's use of certain words. Although this tool contained certain policies that only applied to users based in China, others such policies may have been used to apply to TikTok users outside of China."
The filing contains details that suggest Oracle may have been better off not getting the gig as TikTok's stateside host
TikTok used its X account to reject the US action against it.
