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 offered into American possession, or be banned fully from the area.

As a result of whereas there’s been a lot hypothesis about TikTok sharing U.S. consumer knowledge with its Chinese language mother or father firm, and probably seeding pro-China tales (and censoring anti-China narratives), TikTok itself has denied all claims, and there’s seemingly 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 info with its Chinese language mother or father firm ByteDance, which is required to additionally go on such information with the Chinese language Authorities on request.

As reported by The Wall Avenue Journal:

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

That program, referred to as “Lark”, allows ByteDance staff to observe consumer responses to completely different topics, and probably flag accounts primarily based on their views and behaviors.  

Varied former TikTok and ByteDance staff have acknowledged the existence of the Lark system inside each corporations, which requires consumer knowledge to be despatched to China to be processed. Amongst different subjects, TikTok staff may additionally monitor customers who watched homosexual content material.

The Justice Division claims that it has proof to point out that TikTok has used these insights to focus on customers with propaganda within the app, on the path 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 inside moderation pointers which confirmed that TikTok employees 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 pointers had been solely ever utilized inside China, and had not been transferred to TikTok itself (which is just accessible exterior of China).

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

And while you additionally take into account the affect that the Chinese language Authorities has over the native model of the app, referred to as “Douyin”, together with the continued efforts that Chinese language state-funded teams are enterprise to sway Western consumer 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 menace that TikTok poses is much less about monitoring common consumer knowledge within the app, and studying what you, individually, are thinking about, and extra about understanding the political sensitivities of sure consumer teams, so as to seed potential narratives that might favor the CCP.

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

Is TikTok getting used to affect individuals’s opinions, in alignment with the CCP’s path? It’s nearly not possible to know, as a result of the personalization of TikTok’s algorithm implies that every customers’ expertise is completely different. So that you won’t really feel as if you’re being swayed, and that you just couldn’t probably be swayed by such. But it surely’s possible not as overt as you suppose, and it could be that you just’re additionally not a goal for such.

Or, it might be nothing, as TikTok says.

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