In an earlier court filing, Yu accused ByteDance of serving as a “propaganda tool” for the Chinese Communist Party by promoting nationalistic content and demoting content that does not serve the party’s aims. To allay such concerns, TikTok has said that it would work with Oracle to store all U.S. Chew repeatedly denied TikTok shares user data or has any ties with Chinese authorities. and more than a billion users worldwide, could be used to expand China’s influence.ĭuring the combative March House hearing, lawmakers from both parties grilled Chew over his company’s alleged ties to Beijing, data security and harmful content on the app. They also contend that the app, which has over 150 million monthly active users in the U.S. Some American lawmakers have expressed concern that TikTok’s ties to ByteDance means the data it holds is subject to Chinese law. and worldwide over how it handles data and whether it poses a national security risk. TikTok is under intense scrutiny in the U.S. “It’s important to him that public policy be based on accurate information, so he’s determined to tell his story.” “Telling the truth openly in court is risky, but social change requires the courage to tell the truth,” Jung said. “We plan to vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint,” ByteDance said.Ĭharles Jung, Yu’s lawyer and a partner at the law firm Nassiri & Jung, said Yu chose to raise the allegations because he was “disturbed to hear the recent Congressional testimony of TikTok’s CEO” when Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean, vehemently denied Chinese authorities had access to user data. “His actions are clearly intended to garner media attention. Yu has never raised these allegations in the five years since his employment for Flipagram was terminated in July 2018,” the company said, referring to an app that ByteDance later shut down for business reasons. Yu said he saw the god credential being used to keep tabs on Hong Kong protesters and civil rights activists by monitoring their locations and devices, their network information, SIM card identifications, IP addresses and communications.īyteDance said in a statement that Yu’s accusations were “baseless.” In recent years, following mass protests in 20, the former British colony has come under more far reaching control by Beijing. Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous region in China with its own government. The credential acted as a “backdoor to any barrier ByteDance had supposedly installed to protect data from the C.C.P’s surveillance,” the filing says. In the documents submitted to the court he said ByteDance had a “superuser” credential - also known as a god credential - that enabled a special committee of Chinese Communist Party members stationed at the company to view all data collected by ByteDance including those of U.S. Yu, who worked for the company in 2018, made the allegations in a recent filing for a wrongful dismissal case filed in May in the San Francisco Superior Court. user data, an accusation that the company denies. Yintao Yu, formerly head of engineering for ByteDance in the U.S., says those same people had access to U.S. HONG KONG – A former executive at ByteDance, the Chinese company which owns the popular short-video app TikTok, says in a legal filing that some members of the ruling Communist Party used data held by the company to identify and locate protesters in Hong Kong.

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