US Justice Department: TikTok’s algorithm could allow the Chinese government to influence the US elections

Allowing TikTok to continue to be operated by its current parent company could allow the Chinese government to covertly influence U.S. elections. As CNN writes, the U.S. Justice Department said this in a court filing late Friday.

In a federal appeals court filing, prosecutors raised concerns that TikTok’s algorithm could be used in a “secret manipulation” campaign to “influence the views of Americans for its own purposes”.

“Among other things, it would allow a foreign government to illicitly interfere with our political system and political discourse, including our elections,” prosecutors wrote, adding, “if, for example, the Chinese government were to determine that the outcome of a particular American election as sufficiently important to Chinese interests.”

The filing is in response to a federal lawsuit TikTok brought against the U.S. government in May in an attempt to block a law that could force a nationwide ban of the app. That law, which U.S. President Joe Biden signed in April, says that TikTok must find a new owner by mid-January 2025 or it will be banned from the U.S. entirely.

In their lawsuit, TikTok and Bytedance say that U.S. law is unconstitutional because it runs afoul of free speech rights and prevents Americans from accessing lawful information.