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.
(PDF)
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.
@ecksmc quelle surprise... a country that encourages monetization of citizen's private data finds that citizen's private data is monetized
@CarmenSlamdiego its not the point that the data is monetized here its the fact that the data is being sent to China and could then be viewed by the Chinese government
Its also not the same sort of data that gets collected and sold by data brokers either its more personal data that's been sent to China data that was/is meant to stay in the US
Why do you think almost every country has a ban on tiktok being installed on any government devices issued to employees
@ecksmc oh, I totally understand. I just think it's naive to trust that Google data, for instance, is not shared with any data purchaser in China.
@CarmenSlamdiego yes of course that data is sold to data brokers and bought from data brokers and almost anyone can purchase it
That data isn't "personal" data so to speak - its not the same type of data that tiktok is being accused of moving from US to China
Google also keep that "personal" data but that data isn't sold to data brokers in same way as other data google collects might be - there is a difference in what data is "fair game" and sold & what data is "personal" shouldn't be sold
@CarmenSlamdiego TikTok's data collection is excessive
TikTok’s data collection methods include the ability to collect user contact lists, access calendars, scan hard drives including external ones and geolocate devices on an hourly basis.
It collects way more than a lot of other apps do
Chinese companies are, upon request from the government, required to share access to data they collect.
@ecksmc
thanks for the summary.