ByteDance Push Pro-CCP Messages to Users

On July 27th, four former employees of ByteDance claimed that the company used the defunct app to push pro-CCP content to users in the United States.

The four employees worked at TopBuzz, an international version of the app similar to Apple News or Google News, but which also allowed users to create articles with media outlets. It launched in 2015 and had accumulated 40 million active users per month by 2018 and was once touted as a major driver of news publishing traffic in the US.

According to the former employees, content that was critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Government was heavily censored without the users’ permission. The content allowed to be posted was dominated by sensationalist and unrealistic news, and ByteDance also had teams in New York, Los Angeles, and Beijing that would write pro-CCP content specifically to users, such as information about racial conflicts and fake elections in the United States.

In addition to content creation, content pushed out by ByteDance includes soft CCP propaganda implants, such as trips to CCP countries, and white people talking about the benefits of moving their companies to the CCP. It was also stated that employees must send photos of works back to the company for confirmation, or the employee could face jail.

ByteDance TikTok has also previously been exposed by Senators for collecting data from U.S. users.