Former employees of ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, claim that the company placed pro-China propaganda in its now-defunct U.S. news app, TopBuzz.
BuzzFeed News reports that four former employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, claim that the company used its now-defunct English-language news app TopBuzz to push pro-China messages to Americans. The former employees, all of whom worked for TopBuzz, claim that the company told them to place specific pro-China messaging in the app. ByteDance denies these claims.
(Photo by David Butow/Corbis via Getty Images)
Three of the former employees claim that TopBuzz staff sometimes promoted this content by “pinning” it to the top of the app. One former employee specifically remembered staff posting panda videos in the app alongside videos promoting travel to China. Another remembered a staff member pinning a video of a western man talking about the benefits of moving his startup company to China.
The former employees claim that staff members were required to provide evidence to ByteDance that the content had been placed in the app as directed. Three of the employees said staff members were required to take screenshots of the live content in TopBuzz and send them back to the company.
One source said most of the pro-China messages were “soft” rather than overt political statements, but added: “Let’s be real, this was not something you could say no to. If they don’t do it, somebody’s going to jail.”
A ByteDance spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in an email: “The claim that TopBuzz — which was discontinued years ago — pinned pro-Chinese government content to the top of the app or worked to promote it is false and ridiculous. TopBuzz had over two dozen top tier US and UK media publishing partners, including BuzzFeed, which clearly did not find anything of concern when performing due diligence.”
Read more at BuzzFeed News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
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