"TikTok says its U.S. operation doesn’t censor political content or take instructions from its parent company, the Chinese tech giant ByteDance. Company leaders extol the app as a platform free of the contentious content that has come to characterize its online competitors, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. ByteDance said no moderators for TikTok’s U.S. platform are based in China.
But former U.S. employees said moderators based in Beijing had the final call on whether flagged videos were approved. The former employees said their attempts to persuade Chinese teams not to block or penalize certain videos were routinely ignored, out of caution about the Chinese government’s restrictions and previous penalties on other ByteDance apps.
Beijing’s potential influence over the app in the United States has led the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to review the deal that brought TikTok’s forerunner, Musical.ly, under ByteDance’s control. Lawmakers have urged U.S. officials to investigate what they called “a potential counterintelligence threat we cannot ignore.”
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