The Washington Post-TikToks Chinese owner built search tool for users views on abortion gun control DOJ claims
July 27, 2024 4 min 713 words
美国《华盛顿邮报》在报道中称，TikTok（抖音海外版）的中国母公司字节跳动可以访问一个搜索工具，可以收集美国用户在枪支管控堕胎和宗教等争议问题上的观点信息。美国司法部在关于该视频应用软件在美国前途的法律战的最新进展中提出了这一指控。报道还提到，拜登总统签署了一项法律，要求字节跳动将TikTok出售给一家非中国公司，否则将在美国禁止该应用，而TikTok方面则对美国政府的决定提出了法律挑战。 对于这篇报道，我作为一名观点犀利的新闻评论员，有以下几点评论： 1. 这篇报道延续了西方媒体一贯的陈词滥调，用“国家安全”和“数据安全”作为借口来抹黑中国企业。然而，报道中并没有提供任何证据来证明字节跳动确实收集了美国用户的敏感信息，也没有证据证明中国政府在幕后操纵。 2. 报道中提到的美国司法部指控，实际上是基于对中国企业和中国政府不信任的假设，而不是基于事实和证据。美国政府一直以来对中国企业采取敌对态度，不断以“国家安全”为借口进行打压，这更多是出于政治目的，而不是真正的安全考虑。 3. TikTok作为一个社交媒体平台，的确会收集用户的一些个人信息，包括宗教信仰等。但是，这并不代表字节跳动会滥用这些信息，或者说字节跳动收集信息的范围和程度远低于西方的社交媒体巨头，如Facebook和Instagram。 4. 报道中提到的“数据安全”问题是可以解决的，例如通过加强监管设置数据安全标准等措施。完全没有必要对一个应用进行封禁，这反而是一种过度反应，侵害了美国用户的言论自由权利。 5. 美国政府对TikTok的打压，实际上是出于保护主义和单边主义的思维，是当前美国政府采取的“科技民族主义”政策的一部分。美国政府应该摒弃冷战思维，停止对中国企业的无端打压，为两国企业的公平竞争创造良好的环境。
2024-07-27T08:36:58.745Z
TikTok’s China-based owner ByteDance had access to a search tool that allowed its employees to collect information on U.S. users’ views on divisive issues such as gun control, abortion and religion, the Department of Justice alleged in the latest chapter of the legal battle over the video app’s future in the United States.
New documents filed with the federal appeals court in Washington late Friday said an internal ByteDance workplace and communications program called Lark connected employees in China and the U.S.and was used to send data on U.S. users, including personally identifiable information.
The search tool inside Lark would have allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees “to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion,” a DOJ official said. The filing did not indicate how or if the data was used.
In April, President Biden signed a law forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company or face a ban in the United States, where it has 170 million users. The documents filed Friday were the government’s first major response to a legal challenge brought by TikTok and ByteDance.
TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said early Saturday that the company remained “confident we will prevail in court.”
In a statement published on X, TikTok added that a ban on the app would violate its users’ First Amendment rights. “Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side. The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the First Amendment.”
Social media companies, like Meta’s Facebook, also ask users to share their religion and other personal information. However the DOJ alleges that TikTok’s access to sensitive information could cause geopolitical risks, by allowing the Chinese government to demand ByteDance share U.S. users’ data.
The department stated that TikTok’s algorithm, which determines the videos users see, “can be manually manipulated, and its location in China would permit the Chinese government to covertly control the algorithm—and thus secretly shape the content that American users receive—for its own malign purposes.”
“The serious national-security threat posed by TikTok is real, as evidenced by the public record and confirmed by classified information supplied by the intelligence community," the government argued in another filing.
“TikTok provides the Chinese government the means to undermine U.S. national security in two principal ways: data collection and covert content manipulation,” it added.
The documents filed late Friday were heavily redacted, and Justice Department officials have said they intend to give the court an unredacted version of their legal brief featuring classified information. Judges could review that brief, but not the companies or the general public.
China has said it will block the sale of TikTok’s algorithm, and TikTok and ByteDance’s lawsuit claims that the challenge of replacing such a central part of the app’s structure "is not remotely feasible” before the January deadline.
In May, eight TikTok creators sued the U.S. government over the law, which they said violated their First Amendment rights. TikTok, which is funding their action, has consolidated the two cases into one lawsuit.
The department responded to this by saying that users would still be able to post and view the same content on other social media platforms if TikTok were taken down.
“Any preference these petitioners may have for using TikTok over those other platforms does not create a constitutional right to TikTok,” it said, “nor could their preference overcome the national-security interests supporting the Act.”
Responding to TikTok’s argument that the U.S. had offered no proof for its claims of Chinese government influence, the Justice Department said in its brief that the U.S. “is not required to wait until its foreign adversary takes specific detrimental actions before responding to such a threat."
“Congress can act even if all of the threatened harms have not yet broadly materialized or been detected,” officials wrote.
DOJ officials also argued against TikTok’s First Amendment defense, saying any damage from the law to users’ speech freedoms would be “incidental.”
”Any adverse effects on expression by U.S. persons are indirect and amply justified,” officials said. TikTok creators, they added later, “have no First Amendment right to TikTok.”