WASHINGTON (AP) — In a new attack on one of the world’s most popular technology companies, the Justice Department is accusing TikTok of leveraging its ability to collect mass information about users based on opinions on divisive social issues such as control. of guns, abortion and religion.
Government lawyers wrote in documents filed Friday with the federal appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its Beijing-based parent ByteDance used an internal web suite system called Lark to allow TikTok employees to speak directly to ByteDance engineers in China.
TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about U.S. users, information that ended up being stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees in China, federal officials said.
One of Lark’s internal search tools, the document states, allows ByteDance and TikTok employees in the US and China to collect information about users’ content or expressions, including opinions on sensitive topics such as abortion or religion. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok tracked users who watched LGBTQ content through a dashboard that the company said it had deleted.
The new court documents represent the government’s first major defense in a consequent legal battle about the future of the popular social media platform, used by more than 170 million Americans. Under a law signed by President Joe Biden in April, the company may face a ban in a few months if it doesn’t break ties with ByteDance.
The measure was approved with bipartisan support after lawmakers and government officials expressed concern that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data or sway public opinion toward Beijing’s interests by manipulating the algorithm that populates users’ feeds.
The Justice Department warned in stark terms about the potential for what it called “covert content manipulation” by the Chinese government, saying the algorithm could be designed to shape the content users receive.
“By instructing ByteDance or TikTok to covertly manipulate this algorithm, China could, for example, further its existing malign influence operations and amplify its efforts to undermine trust in our democracy and exacerbate social divisions,” states the document.
The concern, the Justice Department said, is more than theoretical, alleging that employees at TikTok and ByteDance are known to engage in a practice called “warming,” in which certain videos are promoted to receive a certain number of views. While this ability allows TikTok to curate popular content and disseminate it more widely, U.S. authorities say it can also be used for nefarious purposes.
Federal authorities are asking the court to allow a confidential version of the legal document, which would not be accessible to the two companies.
Nothing in the redacted document “changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement.
“A ban on TikTok would silence the voices of 170 million Americans, violating the 1st Amendment,” Haurek said. “As we have said before, the government has never presented proof of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step, hiding behind classified information. We remain confident that that we will prevail in court.”
In the redacted version of court documents, the Justice Department said another tool triggered content suppression based on the use of certain words. Certain of the tool’s policies apply to ByteDance users in China, where the company operates a similar app called Douyin that follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.
But Justice Department officials said other policies may have applied to TikTok users outside of China. TikTok was investigating the existence of these policies and whether they had already been used in the US in or around 2022, officials said.
The government points to the Lark data transfers to explain why federal authorities don’t believe Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and maintained by tech giant Oracle, be enough to protect against national security concerns.
In its legal challenge to the law, TikTok has leaned heavily on arguments that the potential ban violates the First Amendment because it prohibits continued use of the app unless it attracts a new owner through a complex divestiture process. He also argued that the divestment would change the discourse on the platform because it would create a version of TikTok the algorithm is missing that drove its success.
In its response, the Justice Department argued that TikTok has not raised any valid free speech claims, saying the law addresses national security concerns without targeting protected speech, and argues that China and ByteDance, as foreign entities, are not protected by the First Amendment.
TikTok also argued that US law discriminates against viewpoints, citing statements from some lawmakers who criticized what they saw as an anti-Israel bias on the platform during the war in Gaza.
Justice Department officials dispute that argument, saying the law in question reflects their ongoing concern that China could use technology as a weapon against U.S. national security, a fear they say is compounded by demands that companies under Beijing’s control hand over sensitive data to the government. They say TikTok, under its current operating structure, must respond to these demands.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for September.
