The platform made the disclosure as part of its legal challenge against a law forcing its sale in the US.

TikTok says it offered the US government the power to shut the platform down in an attempt to address lawmakers’ data protection and national security concerns.

It disclosed the “kill switch” offer, which it made in 2022, as it began its legal fight against legislation that will ban the app in America unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it.

The law has been introduced because of concerns TikTok might share US user data with the Chinese government - claims it and ByteDance have always denied.

TikTok and ByteDance are urging the courts to strike the legislation down.

“This law is a radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down,” they argued in their legal submission.

They also claimed the US government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022, and pointed to the “kill switch” offer as evidence of the lengths they had been prepared to go.

    • HATEFISH@midwest.social
      302·
      5 months ago

      That’s largely irrelevant unless a gov employee is going to sit behind everyone with server access and make sure nothng is ever touched in an Unlogged unapproved way no?

      • edric@lemm.eeEnglish
        52·
        5 months ago

        Yeah, I remember reading an article that said the data wasn’t necessarily directly accessible by the mothership overseas, but there isn’t anything stopping employees from sending the info themselves, which IIRC is what happened.

    • dmtalon@infosec.pub
      24·
      5 months ago

      Whether true or not there are back doors , as there will always be no matter where it’s hosted. Unless we got access to the full source code .