In an absolutely shocking turn of events, it turns out that you should not trust Chinese spyware run by a Chinese company that is closely allied with the Chinese Communist Party, no matter how many fun dance videos it lets you make.
According to materials viewed by Forbes, TikTok’s parent company planned to track the locations of specific American citizens using the popular app. ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department planned, in at least two instances, to collect the location data of American citizens who had no ties to the company. According to Forbes, the location gathering had nothing to do with targeted ads and everything to do with spying on individual U.S. citizens.
TIKTOK TRIES TO COMPETE WITH AMAZON IN E-COMMERCE WITH FULFILLMENT CENTERS
Of course, this isn’t exactly a surprise. TikTok has been caught logging users’ keystrokes, which the company then lied about. Users in the United States have already had their data accessed from China, repeatedly, which the company has asserted isn’t happening. The app has also been caught bypassing security protections put in place on the Google and Apple app stores.
The Chinese Communist Party collects stockpiles of data to keep its own citizens under its authoritarian thumb. Now, ByteDance is helpfully compiling data profiles for an entire generation of future American leaders as it lives up to its promise to “further deepen cooperation” with the CCP.
There is a reason that banks and the Department of Defense have told employees to delete the app from company, government, and personal devices. Even the Democratic Party, which has happily embraced the app to reach the youths, uses separate, dedicated devices just for TikTok to ensure that no important files will be compromised. Everyone knows it’s Chinese spyware, and yet few American leaders want to do anything about it.
When former President Donald Trump set out to ban the app, reporters from the Washington Post and the New York Times who used the app to farm content were outraged. Joe Biden’s campaign told staffers to remove the app from their devices, but he let TikTok and ByteDance off the hook once he became president. Democrats are now too afraid to do anything about the Chinese spyware app that is now the most popular website in the world because they don’t want to offend young people, who they think are always one election away from handing them permanent ruling majorities.
If we had responsible leaders, the influence of China and the promulgation of Chinese spyware as a fun music and dancing app would be the country’s top priority. But we do not, and the Chinese Communist Party is once again being allowed to reach its tendrils into American life in an increasingly personal, and dangerous, way.
