The company that owns TikTok, ByteDance, pushed pro-China messages in a news app that no longer works.
BuzzFeed News says that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, which is based in China, used a news app called TopBuzz to spread pro-China messages. Former employees of the English-language news aggregator told the publication that ByteDance told them to "pin" content that showed China in a good light or promoted the country to the top of the app. Reports say that they were even asked to show proof, like screenshots of the live content, that they had done what the company asked. By 2018, TopBuzz had 40 million active users every month.
Some of the content that the former employees helped promote was videos of pandas and videos that encouraged people to go to China. At least one staff member remembers pinning a video of a white man talking about how moving his startup to the country would b...