US accuses TikTok of tracking its users’ opinions on issues such as abortion or guns

The US Department of Justice accused the social network TikTok to create a search system that allowed its employees to collect information on controversial issues in American society, such as abortion, religion, and gun control.

That allegation appears in court documents the Justice Department filed late Friday with a federal appeals court in Washington.

According to the Department of Justice, both TikTok Like its parent company, the Chinese company ByteDance, they used an internal communication system called Lark to facilitate direct contact between employees. TikTok and ByteDance engineers in China.

Specifically, the staff of TikTok used Lark to send sensitive data of US users to ByteDance engineers in Chinawith this information stored on the Asian giant’s servers.

The court document, however, does not specify what happened to that information once it was stored on Chinese servers.

These revelations came in legal documents that represent the Justice Department’s first significant response to the legal challenge brought by TikTok and ByteDance following the enactment in April of a law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face being banned from USA.

The legislation, which was passed in the US Congress with bipartisan support, gives ByteDance nine months to find an investor from a country that is not considered “adversary” from Washington and that it can acquire the operations of TikTok in the United StatesOtherwise, the platform would have to cease its activity in the country.

The legislation gives the president the power to extend that deadline for another 90 days, which would give TikTok a maximum of one year to change ownership.

Lawmakers from both parties and Biden administration officials fear that China could obtain information about American users through ByteDance and use its influence to manipulate public opinion by altering the content users see on the app.

TikTok The company says it is committed to protecting its users’ data and has argued that banning the social network would violate the right to freedom of expression, protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

In a statement published this Saturday in X, TikTok He insisted that banning it would be equivalent to “mute” to the 170 million users who use this social network in USA.