TikTok refused to host disguised account for Chinese government

theguardian.com:

TikTok has said it refused an attempt by the Chinese government to open a disguised account on the platform for the purpose of spreading propaganda.

The Chinese-owned social video app said the move was refused because the account would have violated its guidelines.

Bloomberg reported that in April 2020 a message was sent to Elizabeth Kanter, TikTok’s head of government relations for the UK, Ireland, Netherlands and Israel, raising a “Chinese government entity that’s interested in joining TikTok but would not want to be openly seen as a government account as the main purpose is for promoting content that showcase the best side of China (some sort of propaganda).”

The request was deemed “sensitive” internally and received pushback from senior figures at the company, according to Bloomberg. The TikTok spokesperson said the request was made by a TikTok employee on behalf of a friend. Bloomberg reported the government entity concerned was “responsible for public relations”.

TikTok has more than 1bn users worldwide and is owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance.

TikTok’s community guidelines state that users cannot engage in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” where accounts “exert influence and sway public opinion while misleading individuals, our community, or our systems about the account’s identity, location, relationships, popularity, or purpose”. It has also announced that it is working on a policy for labelling content from state-controlled media accounts.

BuzzFeed reported last month that China-based employees of ByteDance were repeatedly able to access non-public data of American users, sparking renewed debate about the security of user data on the platform.

Responding to concerns raised by US senators in the wake of the