In recent news, ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, is facing serious allegations of allowing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members to access the data of Hong Kong civil rights activists and protesters. Former ByteDance executive Yintao Yu made the claims in a US court filing.
According to Mr. Yu, users who uploaded content related to protests were identified and closely monitored. Disturbingly, CCP members allegedly had access to US TikTok user data. ByteDance, however, strongly denied these allegations, dismissing them as baseless.
The accusations were revealed as part of a lawsuit filed by Mr. Yu in the San Francisco Superior Court. In the court filing, he claimed that a CCP committee had been granted a powerful “superuser” credential, also known as the “god user,” which allowed them unrestricted access to all data by ByteDance. Furthermore, Mr. Yu stated that these committee members were not employees of ByteDance but were physically present at the company’s Beijing offices.
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Mr. Yu asserted that this information was widely known among senior executives. He served as the head of engineering in the US for ByteDance from August 2017 for about a year. It is important to note that Mr. Yu’s employment at ByteDance was relatively short, during which he worked on a now-discontinued app called Flipagram.
These allegations come when TikTok is already facing significant scrutiny worldwide. In January 2024, a ban is set to be implemented, making it illegal for app stores to offer TikTok. However, the ban does not prevent existing TikTok users from continuing to use the app.
TikTok, a platform popular among teenagers and users in their 20s, claims to have 150 million American users. The accusations against ByteDance raise severe concerns about user privacy and the potential misuse of data on a global scale.
