In the latest attack against one of the world’s most popular technology companies, the Justice Department has accused TikTok of using its ability to collect massive amounts of information about users based on their views on divisive social issues such as gun control, abortion and religion.
TikTok and its Beijing-based parent company Bytedance used an internal Web-Suite system called Lark to allow TikTok employees to speak directly with authorities, government lawyers wrote in documents filed late Friday in a federal appeals court in Washington. Bytedance Engineer in China,
Federal officials said TikTok employees used Lark to send sensitive data about U.S. users, information that was stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees in China.
The filing said one of Lark’s internal search tools allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the US and China to collect information on users’ content or expressions, including views on sensitive topics such as abortion or religion. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok tracked users who viewed LGBTQ content through a dashboard, which the company later removed.
The new court documents represent the government’s first major defense in an ongoing legal battle over the future of the popular social media platform, which is used by more than 170 million Americans. Under a law signed by President Joe Biden in April, the company could face a ban within months if it doesn’t cut ties with ByteDance.
The measure was passed with bipartisan support, as lawmakers and administration officials expressed concerns that Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over American user data or influence public opinion toward Beijing’s interests by manipulating the algorithms that fill users’ feeds.
“Intelligence reporting suggests that ByteDance and TikTok Global have taken action in response to (the Chinese government’s) demand to censor content outside of China,” Casey Blackburn, a senior US intelligence official, wrote in a filing supporting the government’s arguments.
The Justice Department warned in clear terms about the potential for the Chinese government to “surreptitiously manipulate content,” saying algorithms could be designed to shape the content that users receive.
“By instructing ByteDance or TikTok to secretly manipulate that algorithm, China could, for example, advance its existing malign influence operations and escalate its efforts to undermine trust in our democracy and sow social divisions,” the brief said.
The Justice Department said the concerns are more than theoretical, alleging that employees at TikTok and ByteDance are known to engage in a practice called “heating,” in which certain videos are promoted to receive a certain number of views. While this capability enables TikTok to curate popular content and disseminate it more widely, US officials believe it could also be used for nefarious purposes.
Federal officials are asking the court to allow a classified version of the legal brief, which will not be available to the two companies.
“Nothing in the edited brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement.
“The TikTok ban would silence the voices of 170 million Americans, which is a violation of the First Amendment,” Horeck said. “As we’ve said before, the government has never provided evidence of its claims, including that Congress passed this unconstitutional law. Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step by hiding behind secret information. We are confident we will prevail in court.”
In a redacted version of court documents, the Justice Department said another tool activated the suppression of content based on the use of certain words. Some of the tool’s policies apply to ByteDance users in China, where the company operates a similar app called Douyin that abides by Beijing’s strict censorship rules.
But Justice Department officials said other policies could apply to TikTok users outside China. TikTok is investigating the existence of these policies and whether they were ever used in the US in or around 2022, officials said.
The government points to the Lark data transfer to explain why federal officials don’t believe Project Texas, TikTok’s $1.5 billion mitigation plan to store U.S. user data on servers owned and managed by tech giant Oracle, is sufficient to guard against national security concerns.
In its legal challenge against the law, TikTok has pressed the argument that the potential ban violates the First Amendment because it prevents the app from continuing to speak until it attracts a new owner through a complex divestiture process. It has also argued that divestment would change the way speech is conducted on the platform because it would create a version of TikTok that would lack the algorithm that has driven its success.
In its response, the Justice Department argued that TikTok has not made any legitimate free speech claim, said 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 has also argued that U.S. law discriminates based on viewpoint, and has cited statements by some lawmakers who criticized what they saw as an anti-Israel bias on the platform during the war in Gaza.
Justice Department officials disagree with that argument, saying the controversial law reflects their concern that China could use the technology against U.S. national security, a fear they say is exacerbated by demands that Beijing-controlled companies hand over sensitive data to the government. They say TikTok should be amenable to those demands under its current operating structure.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for September.