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Three hundred employees at the parent company of ubiquitous social media app TikTok list Chinese state media outlets in their employment histories, a Forbes investigation of public LinkedIn profile information revealed Thursday.
The investigation may reveal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ties to ByteDance, a Chinese technology company that operates several popular social media apps, through Chinese media organizations that generate CCP propaganda, according to Forbes. The profiles include 23 current directors of ByteDance responsible for “content partnerships, public affairs, corporate social responsibility and media cooperation,” and 15 who may still hold employment status with certain Chinese state-run media outlets, though it’s possible that the LinkedIn profiles were not updated after a change of job status.
In addition, profiles of 50 former Chinese state media employees show they hold various positions at TikTok, a popular video creation and sharing platform, including a “content strategy manager” who previously served as chief correspondent for China’s Xinhua News, Forbes found.
“The Chinese government is probably trying to poke around to figure out—how can they use the information they’re getting from watching TikTok to better tailor their propaganda for a Western audience?’ James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Forbes.
