Thread by @isaacstonefish

TikTok just acknowledged to European users that it can share their data with the Chinese government. This is a massive admission, and a key to a puzzle. To understand why, it's important to understand CCP influence in Chinese companies (thread).
theguardian.com/technology/202…

To start, the language: "we allow certain employees within our corporate group located in Brazil, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States, remote access to TikTok European user data.”

So, that explains the headline: TikTok tells European users its staff in China can access their data. Why does that mean the Chinese government gets it? Enter the Party Cell.

Every Chinese company with at least three Party members must have a Party cell. TikTok's corporate group -- including ByteDance, and others -- likely employs hundreds, if not thousands, of Party members.
asia.nikkei.com/Business/Compa…

The Party controls, and in some ways is, the government.
Beyond Party branches, there are employees 'double-hatted' with the Party: Forbes, for example, found that at least fifteen ByteDance employees ARE CURRENTLY working for the Chinese state.
forbes.com/sites/emilybak…

And that's from LinkedIN profiles. Most people who are secretly with the PLA and embedded in Chinese and American companies know enough not to put that affiliation on their public LinkedIN page...

That's not even to mention Chinese data laws, which require sharing certain data with the government, or Chinese norms, that companies will share data with the government/Party when it asks (and won't fight back if it takes without asking.)

So TikTok employees who are Party members, Party reps, and/or Chinese government employees, can access TikTok data.

So: if you share data with a large Chinese company, you are sharing data with the Chinese Communist Party. And that is what TikTok just admitted to doing in Europe. (End).