TikTok Has Tool to Collect Information on Users’ Views on Social Issues, DOJ Says

TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance have a tool to collect information on users based on their views on hot button social issues such as gun control, abortion, and religion, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
In a brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on July 26, the Justice Department said TikTok employees were able to communicate directly with ByteDance engineers in China via an internal web-suite system called “Lark,” which also went by the name “Feishu.”
TikTok employees had “sent significant amounts of restricted U.S. user data” through Lark channels to “address various operations issues,” according to a court filing. It added this meant “certain sensitive U.S. person data” were being stored on Chinese servers and accessible to ByteDance employees in China….