Chinese Regime Takes Financial Stake In TikTok, Now Directly Linked to Facebook Fact-Checker ‘Lead Stories’.
The news will cause further consternation over the TikTok app and its data. Such threats including to national security and data privacy prompted the Trump administration to attempt to ban the platform from operating in the U.S. an effort quashed by the Biden White House.
The new deal follows months of National Pulse reporting highlighting the company s ties via its personnel and global ambitions to Beijing. The National Pulse has also reported on ByteDance s funding of Facebook fact-checking partner Lead Stories a relationship that outlet founder Alan Duke has insisted he is very comfortable with.
TikTok s parent company employs former Chinese Communist Party officials, including individuals with military ties, to executive roles and grants party members preferential treatment in hiring processes. As a result, TikTok users have seen videos challenging the Chinese Communist Party routinely fall victim to censorship.
The ByteDance founder has also pledged to use his firm to promote socialist core values and devotion to the Chinese Communist Party in a 2018 letter unearthed by The National Pulse.