TikTok is at least as much an American tool as it is a Chinese influence operation
Revelations of a Beijing-based spying campaign on the video sharing service have served to obfuscate Washington’s own insidious efforts
It’s been revealed that TikTok spied on multiple journalists at Forbes magazine who were investigating the company, in order to uncover which staffers were leaking insider material. The exposure has been framed as evidence of shady Chinese activity – but TikTok’s secret status as a wing of US propaganda power points to a very different story than the mainstream media is telling.
The existence of the covert surveillance campaign at TikTok was confirmed following an internal investigation by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, which found employees had improperly gained access to IP addresses and user data in an attempt to identify whether journalists had been in the same locales as ByteDance employees.
“The misconduct of certain individuals… was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data,” a TikTok spokesperson said, commenting on the investigation’s findings. “This misbehavior is unacceptable, and not in line with our efforts across TikTok to earn the trust of our users.”
Known as Project Raven, the surveillance campaign was launched this summer after BuzzFeed published a story revealing ByteDance employees in China had repeatedly accessed US user data. Based on over 80 hours of leaked audio recordings of internal TikTok meetings, the story speculated on how the Chinese government could gain access to American users’ personal data and influence their “commercial, cultural, or political behavior” through TikTok’s algorithms.
Project Raven was overseen by ByteDance’s Beijing-based Internal Audit and Risk Control department, which is primarily responsible for investigating potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. Employees in that unit vacuumed up data on former BuzzFeed and Financial Times journalists, as well as a “small number of people connected to the reporters” through their TikTok accounts, ByteDance admits.
The internal investigation of Project Raven led to the firing of ByteDance’s chief internal auditor, who led the spying effort, while the China-based executive to whom he reported resigned. Two employees in China and the US involved in Project Raven were also fired.
“None of the individuals found to have directly participated in or overseen the misguided plan remain employed at ByteDance,” the company claimed in internal emails. “Individuals misused their authority to obtain access to TikTok user data.”
Condemnation of the spying operation has been widespread and aggressive. A Forbes spokesperson claimed the effort was “a direct assault on the idea of a free press and its critical role in a functioning democracy.” A Federal Communications Commission representative told Forbes, “this should be the final nail in the coffin for the idea that US officials can trust TikTok.” Meanwhile, House Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, a noted anti-China hawk, had even more fiery words for the social network:
“This new development reinforces serious concerns the social media platform has permitted engineers and executives in [China] to repeatedly access private data of US users despite repeated claims to lawmakers and users this data was protected. The DoJ has also been promising for over a year they are looking into ways to protect US user data from Bytedance and the CCP – it’s time to come forward with that solution or Congress could soon be forced to step in.”
A shocking ploy the spying certainly was, but the righteous anger of Forbes, the FCC, and Warner is misplaced, likely by deliberate design. While TikTok is an international outgrowth of China’s popular Douyin video-sharing platform, and ByteDance is a Chinese-owned tech giant, the social network in its Western form is a US-dominated entity in every regard.
MintPress News has documented how there is a “pipeline” between NATO and US government agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, and TikTok. Military and intelligence professionals move directly from the former to security and other roles with the social network. In at least one case, a military intelligence officer appears to be employed by the US Army and TikTok simultaneously.
What’s more, TikTok is openly weaponized and exploited by Washington for information warfare purposes at home and abroad. Such interest is understandable – in 2021, it became the most-visited website in the entire world, and it has at least 70 million active users in the US alone.
https://www.rt.com/news/569140-us-influence-tiktok-china/