TikTok said your data stays in America. Leaked recordings proved Beijing engineers could see everything. An employee said 'everything is seen in China.' They told EU regulators they don't store data in China -- got fined EUR 530 million when caught lying, then admitted it happened again.
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A researcher proved TikTok's browser watches every key you press on every website -- including passwords and credit cards. TikTok said it doesn't collect keystrokes, but their own privacy policy says it collects 'keystroke patterns.'
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TikTok secretly read your clipboard -- passwords, bank details, private messages -- every few keystrokes, even in other apps. They promised to stop. Three months later Apple proved they hadn't. They wouldn't say where the data went.
TikTok says you must be 13 to use the app. The US Department of Justice says TikTok "knowingly permitted" children under 13 to create accounts. Internal documents showed TikTok knew millions of users were children. An estimated 17 million American children under 13 are on TikTok. The age gate is a single screen that asks your birthday. A seven-year-old can type "2010" instead of "2017." TikTok knows this. The DOJ says they knew and kept collecting data anyway.
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TikTok paid $5.7 million in 2019 for illegally collecting children's data and signed a consent decree promising to stop. Five years later, the FTC referred them to the Department of Justice for violating that same decree. They agreed to delete under-13 videos in 2019, then allowed millions of new under-13 accounts to be created. A consent decree is a legal promise to stop breaking the law. TikTok broke the promise. The DOJ is now involved because the FTC's punishment didn't work the first time.
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TikTok says it cares about "the well-being of our community." Internal documents showed ByteDance measured how quickly new users become addicted. The infinite scroll is variable-ratio reinforcement -- the same psychological mechanism as a slot machine -- applied to the brains of twelve-year-olds. The average American teenager spends nearly two hours a day on TikTok. Forty state attorneys general investigated the mental health impact. Utah sued, saying TikTok uses "dopamine-inducing design features." The screen time tools are a bandage on a product engineered to be unputdownable.
CapCut has a billion downloads. CapCut is owned by ByteDance. ByteDance is a Chinese company. China's National Intelligence Law requires all organisations to cooperate with state intelligence. When you use CapCut's face filters, you're submitting biometric face data to a company that cannot legally refuse a request from Chinese intelligence. A billion faces. ByteDance also collects your device identifiers, location, keystroke patterns, and clipboard data. CapCut is free because you're not paying with money. You're paying with your face, your location, and your keystrokes -- to a company subject to the intelligence laws of a government that has built the most comprehensive surveillance state in human history.
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A teacher tells a 10-year-old to make a video for a school project. The kid uses CapCut because it's free. The kid uses a face filter because it's fun. The kid's biometric face data goes to ByteDance in China. No age check. No parental consent. No warning. CapCut doesn't ask how old you are before scanning your face. Schools recommend it because it's free and easy. Parents don't know it's owned by the same company as TikTok. A child's face data, collected for a school project, processed by a company subject to Chinese intelligence laws. The teacher wanted creativity. ByteDance got biometrics.
Lemon8 is TikTok with a different name. Same parent company: ByteDance. Same privacy policy: merged in late 2024. Same Chinese jurisdiction: National Intelligence Law applies. Same ban: included in the January 2025 TikTok legislation. 77 million downloads from people who think it's a lifestyle app. It's ByteDance's backup plan — if TikTok gets banned, Lemon8 keeps the data pipeline flowing. Your Lemon8 data is governed by TikTok's privacy policy, processed by ByteDance, stored on servers subject to Chinese intelligence law. The rebrand is the product. The surveillance is the same.