China's Ministry of State Security Uses TikTok To Identify and Profile U.S. Military Members
ByteDance ordered to improve its user portrait mining software in TikTok's 700 million user base While this headline is for a fictional scenario at the Social Media Information Warfighter Exercise on Nov 19th, there’s no way to know that it isn’t already happening and just hasn’t been reported. In fact, the sub-heading is 100% real. BACKGROUND According to The Information , ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, recently placed and then deleted a job posting for a Beijing-based senior TikTok engineer whose responsibilities include “mining user portraits based on massive user behavior data.” Earlier this year, Reuters reported that the Chinese government took a 1% stake and one of three board seats in Beijing Bytedance Technology, which holds some of the licenses for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok (also owned by Bytedance). The licenses related to the company’s video and information platforms. On April 4, 2019, Sohu.com reported that Bytedance signed a mutual cooperation
