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Federal attorneys say China could use TikTok to influence U.S. elections
By Mike Heuer,
6 hours ago
July 27 (UPI) -- The Chinese Communist Party-affiliated TikTok owner ByteDance could secretly influence U.S. elections and undermine democracy, federal attorneys said in a legal filing.
A sign for the social media app TikTok is displayed when the New York Yankees play the New York Mets at Yankee Stadium on August 28, 2020 in New York City. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
Department of Justice attorneys in an appellate court filing Friday said China could use TikTok's algorithm to secretly manipulate what users can and cannot see to influence how U.S. citizens view particular candidates and policies to better serve China's interests.
Allowing TikTok's U.S. operations to remain with its current owner "would allow a foreign government to illicitly interfere with our political system and political discourse, including our elections," the federal attorneys argue.
The current ownership arrangement could enable the Chinese Communist Party to interfere with the election process if it "were to determine that the outcome of a particular American election" is "important to Chinese interests."
Federal attorneys say TikTok and ByteDance use a program called Lark to collect information on users and store it on computers in China.
President Joe Biden makes remarks on April 24 after signing the $95 billion National Security Package that would ban TikTok if ByteDance doesn't sell its U.S. operations by Jan. 19. File Photo by Ron Sachs/UPI
TikTok and ByteDance employees in the United States and China can cull information regarding specific users' content and comments, including their views on abortion, religion and other sensitive topics.
The Wall Street Journal in 2023 published a story saying TikTok used a special dashboard to track users who viewed LGBTQ-related content
epa08581701 A TikTok app is seen on the tablet in Shanghai, China, 03 August 2020. According to media reports, Microsoft is in talks to buy the US operations of Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok which belongs to Chinese company Bytedance. This development comes as US President Donald Trump announced he wanted to ban Tiktok, the app particularly popular with young people and is said to count around one billion users worldwide, including around 100 million in the US....US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that US President Donald Trump will crack down Chinese software apps such is Bytedance?s TikTok in upcoming days. EPA-EFE/ALEX PLAVEVSKI
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