Ben Smith, writing his media column in today’s New York Times, has obtained an internal TikTok document describing how algorithms written in Beijing are fueling its explosive growth and its ability to essentially addict viewers. Much of that is already well-understood.
But he also reveals just how deeply TikTok is intertwined with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. “The document also makes clear that TikTok has done nothing to sever its ties ith its Chinese parent, ByteDance,” Smith writes. President Trump tried to force a sale of TikTok to an American company, but was unsuccessful. The Biden Administration is concentrating on the cyber challenge from China.
It’s clear that TikTok is very similar in nature to ByteDance’s very similar China app, Douyin. “TikTok’s development process, the document says, is closely intertwined with the process of Doyin’s,” Smith writes. “The document at one point refers TikTok employees to the “Launch Process for Douyin Recommendation Strategy,” and links to an internal company document that it says is the ‘same document for TikTok and Douyin.'”
He continues: “TikTok employees are also deeply interwoven into ByteDance’s ecosystem. They use a ByteDance product called Lark, a corporate internal communications system like Slack…”
TikTok’s chief executive officer is based in Singapore, to create the appearance that the company is not a Chinese company, and the company says that no data about TikTok’s 1 billion users is transferred to China. The U.S. data is stored in the U.S. with a “backup” in Singapore, which means ByteDance can see anything it wants to.
What Americans reveal on TikTok is pretty incredible. They reveal their inner feelings and their romantic and sexual predilections. And TikTok has access to their contacts. So if a 14-year-old boy is courting a 33-year-old man, or vice versa, that explosive information is there for the taking–and exploitation.
It’s time we woke up to TikTok, Zoom and Whatsap. The Chinese have extended their digital tentacles into the very fabric of how millions of Americans live.
