On Tuesday, BuzzFeed News reported that ByteDance, the parent company of the video social media network TikTok, used a now-defunct U.S. news app to push pro-China content — and suppress criticism of the regime.
"The four former ByteDance employees, each of whom worked on TopBuzz, claimed that ByteDance instructed members of its staff to place specific pieces of pro-China messaging in the app," reported Emily Baker-White. "According to three of the former employees, TopBuzz staff sometimes promoted content by 'pinning' it to the top of the app. One former employee remembered staff posting panda videos in the app, along with videos promoting travel to China. Another remembered a staff member pinning a video in which a white man talked about the benefits of moving his startup to China."
"According to all four former employees, staff were required to provide evidence to ByteDance that the content had in fact been placed in the app as directed. Three of the former employees said the staff was required to take screenshots of the live content in TopBuzz and send them back to the company," said the report. "One source characterized most of the pro-China messages as 'soft' rather than overt political statements. But, the person said, 'Let’s be real, this was not something you could say no to. If they don’t do it, somebody’s going to jail.'"
Furthermore, said the report, "Interviews with 15 former ByteDance employees who worked on TopBuzz also suggest efforts to censor content critical of the Chinese government, an operation to scrape and republish content from news publishers without permission, and an emphasis on featuring sensationalist, often inaccurate news to drive engagement."
ByteDance denies all of the allegations, calling them "false and ridiculous" and saying, "TopBuzz had over two dozen top tier US and UK media publishing partners, including BuzzFeed, which clearly did not find anything of concern when performing due diligence."
In 2020, former President Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok over concerns its platform could be used to help China spy on Americans. He issued an executive order giving Americans 45 days to suspend all business with ByteDance unless it was sold to an American company, although multiple federal judges blocked that order. ByteDance subsequently worked with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to create a plan to block U.S. user data from being accessed by the Chinese government.
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