EXCLUSIVE: Documents And Recordings Reveal How TikTok Forced Staff To Swear Oaths To Uphold China’s ‘Socialist System’

Starter comment:
This exclusive news story from the DailyCaller covers some interesting things have come out of a gender discrimination lawsuit against TikTok, its parent ByteDance, and ByteDance’s subsidiary Douyin (the China version of TikTok):

> Former TikTok marketing executive Katie Puris alleged she was forced to sign an agreement with the tech giant’s China-based sister company, Douyin, swearing not to divulge “state secrets,” disrupt “national honor” or undermine “ethnic unity,” according to documents obtained by the DCNF.

> Puris, TikTok’s former head of global brand and creative, alleged in her lawsuit that TikTok executives are required to sign an agreement with ByteDance subsidiary Douyin that polices speech and demands compliance with China’s socialist system.

It looks like the way this was done, was to make employees of TikTok in the US “sign a user agreement with Douyin’s ‘Feishu Employee Stock Ownership Plan’ to access ‘information concerning her equity grants’, essentially tying TikTok back to the China based entity. That stock plan says:

> “You shall comply with applicable laws and guidelines and abide by public order and good customs, the socialist system, national interests, legal rights of other citizens, and information authenticity requirements,”

It also prohibits employees from:

> “overthrowing the socialist system,” “inciting secession,” “undermining national religious policies, or promoting cults and superstitions,” as well as injunctions against “meaningless information or deliberate use of character combinations to avoid technical censorship.”

And all the US-based TikTok mangers also had a second manager in mainland China from the parent company:

> After being hired, Puris was allegedly told about TikTok’s “dual reporting structure,” which required her to report to one Beijing-based executive working for ByteDance and Douyin as well as another U.S.-based president of global business solutions at TikTok, according to the complaint.

These and other details in this story, revealed by the lawsuits, shows that TikTok was completely controlled by the mainland China entity and that US employees had to abide by the Chinese government’s (CCP’s) rules and requirements even for the US app’s algorithm and content.