Beijing-Based ByteDance Knows TikTok Is A Cultural Weapon

[Kamaji]

Beijing-Based ByteDance Knows TikTok Is A Cultural Weapon

By Emily Jashinsky
February 04, 2022

When Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history last quarter, he blamed TikTok. And why shouldn’t he? The young platform is both the most downloaded app and most visited website in the world. It’s addicting and profitable, which also makes TikTok a tool of cultural control.

Beijing understands this, which is why the app’s Chinese counterpart Douyin is run much differently by ByteDance. Indeed, the Chinese government recently acquired a 1 percent stake and a seat on the board of one of the Beijing-based company’s domestic subsidiaries.

Andrew Schulz explained this perfectly in a clip he posted to Instagram this week.

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“You don’t have to crush an opposing nation to convince them to crush themselves,” Schulz wrote in the caption. If China seeks to undermine the power of the United States, controlling the algorithms that captivate its children isn’t a bad place to start.

If you browse this BuzzFeed roundup of the top trends on TikTok in 2021, you’ll find explicit dances, songs, and gender-bending alongside adorable dogs and easy recipes. In 2020, Seventeen included the “WAP” dance on its roundup of the app’s most popular trends, meaning millions of American kids were watching and making video after video of a song about “wet ass p-ssy.”

It’s of course true that American culture is decaying on its own. But it doesn’t help that a company based in and legally under the control of China is in charge of a place our kids spend hours a day, talking about politics, family life, and culture. It would be like Moscow owning our film studios during the Cold War, except worse because TikTok is omnipresent in every teen’s pocket.

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Source:  https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/04/beijing-based-bytedance-knows-tiktok-is-a-cultural-weapon/

[mountaineer]

TikTok insiders say social media company is tightly controlled by Chinese parent ByteDance
Published Fri, Jun 25 20214:31 PM EDTUpdated Fri, Jun 25 20218:09 PM EDT
Salvador Rodriguez

Key Points

    *Former TikTok employees say there is cause for concern when it comes to the popular social media app’s Chinese parent company.
    *They say ByteDance has access to TikTok’s American user data and is closely involved in the Los Angeles company’s decision-making and product development.
    *Some cybersecurity experts worry that the Chinese government could use TikTok to spread propaganda or censorship to American audience, or to exercise influence over users who may come to regret what they posted on the service.

A former TikTok recruiter remembers that her hours were supposed to be from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., but more often than not, she found herself working double shifts. That’s because the company’s Beijing-based ByteDance executives were heavily involved in TikTok’s decision-making, she said, and expected the company’s California employees to be available at all hours of the day. TikTok employees, she said, were expected to restart their day and work during Chinese business hours to answer their ByteDance counterparts’ questions.

This recruiter, along with four other former employees, told CNBC they’re concerned about the popular social media app’s Chinese parent company, which they say has access to American user data and is actively involved in the Los Angeles company’s decision-making and product development. These people asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from the company.

TikTok launched internationally in September 2017. Its parent company, ByteDance, purchased Musical.ly, a social app that was growing in popularity in the U.S., for $1 billion in November 2017, and the two were merged in August 2018. In just a few years, it has quickly amassed a user base of nearly 92 million in the U.S. In particular, the app has found a niche among teens and young adults — TikTok has surpassed Instagram as U.S. teenagers’ second-favorite social media app, after Snapchat, according to an October 2020 report by Piper Sandler.

Last year, then-President Donald Trump sought to ban TikTok in the U.S. or force a merger with a U.S. company. The Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, expressed national security concerns over the popular social media app’s Chinese ownership, with Pompeo saying at one point that TikTok might be “feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party.” TikTok has consistently denied those claims, telling CNBC, “We have never provided user data to the Chinese government, nor would we do so if asked.” In the company’s last four semi-annual transparency reports, it does not report a single request from the Chinese government for user data.

Earlier in June, TikTok caught a break when President Joe Biden signed an executive order that revoked Trump’s order to ban the app unless it found a U.S. buyer. Biden’s order, however, sets criteria for the government to evaluate the risk of apps connected to foreign adversaries. ...

CNBC

[Free Vulcan]

I do though appreciate the LibsOfTikTok account making lemonade out of those lemons with their videos of nutbag wokesters.