With TikTok’s U.S. sell-off invoice looming, many questions stay as to what precisely the case is towards the app, and what swayed U.S. senators to vote overwhelmingly in favor of forcing the app to be bought into American possession or be banned totally from the area.

As a result of whereas there’s been a lot hypothesis about TikTok sharing U.S. person information with its Chinese language dad or mum firm, and doubtlessly seeding pro-China tales (and censoring anti-China narratives), TikTok itself has denied all claims. So far, there’s seemingly been no proof to show that any such misuse has occurred.

Or is there?

Late final week, in public court docket filings associated to the TikTok sell-off invoice, the U.S. Justice Division claimed that TikTok has tracked U.S. customers’ views on delicate points, and shared that data with its Chinese language dad or mum firm ByteDance, which is required to additionally go on such information with the Chinese language authorities on request.

As reported by The Wall Road Journal:

“The Justice Division stated it primarily based its conclusions about TikTok monitoring delicate views on the invention of a software program device that lets U.S. workers of TikTok and ByteDance gather person data primarily based on a person’s content material, together with their views on topics equivalent to gun management, abortion and faith.”

That program, known as Lark, allows ByteDance workers to watch person responses to completely different topics and doubtlessly flag accounts primarily based on their views and behaviors.  

Numerous former TikTok and ByteDance workers have acknowledged the existence of the Lark system, which requires person information to be despatched to China to be processed. Amongst different subjects, TikTok workers may additionally observe customers who watched homosexual content material.

The Justice Division claims that it has proof to indicate that TikTok has used these insights to focus on customers with propaganda within the app, on the course of the Chinese language Authorities, whereas additionally censoring sure content material as demanded by the CCP.

Which, as famous, has additionally lengthy been speculated. Again in 2019, The Guardian reported on TikTok’s inner moderation tips which confirmed that TikTok workers had been ordered to censor movies that talked about Tiananmen Sq., Tibetan independence or the Falun Gong. TikTok denied these claims, whereas additionally noting that a few of these tips had been solely ever utilized inside China and had not been transferred to TikTok itself (which is just out there outdoors of China).

However clearly, the priority stays, and TikTok does seemingly have the means and motivation to make use of these insights to affect person opinion, if it so chooses.

And if you additionally take into account the affect that the Chinese language authorities has over the native model of the app, known as Douyin, together with the continued efforts that Chinese language state-funded teams are enterprise to sway Western person opinions in just about each different social app, it appears logical to imagine that TikTok would current an ideal vector for a similar.

So, primarily based on these findings, the risk that TikTok poses is much less about monitoring normal person information within the app, and studying what you, individually, are inquisitive about, and extra about understanding the political sensitivities of sure person teams, so as to seed potential narratives that may favor the CCP.

So whereas many TikTok supporters have criticized the U.S. authorities’s transfer to power the app right into a sell-off, there’s clear logic, primarily based on inner insights, to help the Justice Division’s case.

Is TikTok getting used to affect folks’s opinions, in alignment with the CCP’s course? It’s nearly unattainable to know, as a result of the personalization of TikTok’s algorithm signifies that every person’s expertise is completely different. So that you may not really feel as if you’re being swayed, and that you simply couldn’t probably be swayed by such. However it’s probably not as overt as you suppose, and it might be that you simply’re additionally not a goal for such.

Or, it might be nothing, as TikTok says.

That is what the court docket will now must determine, as TikTok challenges the ruling, within the hopes of remaining energetic within the U.S.