THREAD:
Let’s talk about some information about TikTok and its parent company that few people seem to be mentioning right now.
Background: ByteDance is the China-based parent company of TikTok. ByteDance has several executives with direct connections to the CCP.
ByteDance executives have numerous connections directly to the Chinese Communist Party.
Key: China's 2017 National Intelligence Law mandates organizations like ByteDance and their employees must support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.
They are legally required to assist in any Chinese intelligence operation against Americans.
TikTok has spent years assuring Americans that American data is only stored in the U.S. and employees in China do not have access to it, but that has been exposed as a lie repeatedly.
Company recordings, documents, and admissions repeatedly have shown TikTok was lying.
After being confronted, TikTok eventually admitted they do keep US creator data in China despite previous denials. Then they admitted that employees at ByteDance in China do have access to U.S. data after receiving specific permissions.
There was a particularly revealing incident back in 2022 that required the FBI to get involved.
After several journalists started investigating ByteDance, employees in China used their TikTok data (which the company had previously claimed was inaccessible) to research and track those journalists to see if any ByteDance/TikTok employees were cooperating with them.
After being caught, ByteDance admitted to what had happened but claimed these were just rogue employees in China.
Several former ByteDance/TikTok employees have come forward to confirm the worst assumptions:
- Former US ByteDance engineering director, Yanato Yu, revealed in a lawsuit that the CCP maintained the ability to access TikTok’s U.S. data and that they used the application to promote and suppress specific content based on what the CCP preferred. The company was providing guidance on how to advance “core Communist values”
- Former TikTok marketing executive, Katie Puris, revealed in a lawsuit that she was forced to sign a loyalty pledge promising to promote China’s “socialist system” and “national interests.”
She also revealed TikTok has a dual reporting structure where they have bosses in the U.S. and China, but the major decisions about compensation, etc. were usually made by the management in China.
The U.S. management seemed to be just a way to make it look like a U.S. company on paper.
The evidence is overwhelming – this is far more an intelligence operation than a mere social media company. Only willful ignorance could deny it.
This explains why they'd rather threaten to shut down, forfeiting tens of billions of dollars, than relinquish control.
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