Inside TikTok’s Attempts to ‘Downplay the China Association’

Leaked paperwork from inside TikTok reveal how the corporate video games out responses to tough questions — and spotlight what the corporate thinks its largest public notion issues are. Chief amongst them: China.

The PR paperwork, which Gizmodo obtained from inside the firm, are titled “TikTok Master Messaging” and “TikTok Key Messages.” Both are explanations of press speaking factors in English and embody a model translated right into a European language. (Gizmodo isn’t naming the language to guard the sourcing of the doc.) The bigger of the 2, the 53-page TikTok Master Messaging doc, outlines key messages the corporate desires to current to the general public. The file’s model historical past exhibits it was final up to date in August 2021 however had been persistently altered because it was created in March 2020.

Right close to the highest of the listing? “Downplay the parent company ByteDance, downplay the China association, downplay AI.” All three bullet factors are the second, third and fourth strains of the doc, second solely to “Emphasise TikTok as a brand/platform.” Further down, the corporate advises its workers to emphasize that, although younger individuals love TikTok, “the app is only for users aged 13 and over.”

The paperwork are influential even past TikTok’s responses to on a regular basis information tales: Language much like what’s in them appeared in a TikTok govt’s testimony earlier than the United Kingdom’s parliament and within the firm’s letters to United States senators. TikTok declined to reply questions concerning the leaked supplies.

The Chinese hyperlink is a identified difficulty for TikTok PR—an FCC commissioner requested Apple and Google to take away it from their app shops over the connection in late June—and it comes up regularly throughout each paperwork. In the 15-page TikTok Key Messages doc, which was created in February 2021, TikTok’s public relations persons are given soundbites to deal with any questions on “China/Bytedance Ownership”.

The soundbites embody:

• “There’s a lot of misinformation about TikTok right now. The reality is that the TikTok app isn’t even available in China.” TikTok used this speaking level when responding to the BBC.
• “We have not and will not share user data with the Chinese government, and would not do so if asked.” TikTok used this one in response to BuzzFeed News.
• “We have a number of measures in place to significantly reduce access to user data, and we continue to build those out.” TikTok printed this speaking level on its own blog.

The doc goes on to supply “proof points” for TikTok PRs to take, together with:

• “TikTok is a global company”
• “The TikTok app doesn’t even operate in China.”
• “TikTok is highly localized in its experience and operations, which means <> has a lot of independence in the day-to-day operations of the platform.”

In the Master Messaging doc, employees are given potential questions they might face from journalists and inventory solutions to them. Among the questions TikTok PR expects to face: “What is the relationship between Bytedance and its individual products such as TikTok and Toutiao?”, to which the PR is given the response: “Bytedance is the holding company of TikTok. TikTok employees cannot comment on ByteDance. We will refer to ByteDance itself.” Later, underneath the heading “DO NOT USE,” the doc offers employees a high-level briefing of ByteDance’s background.

The longer doc additionally echoes the priority that there’s “a lot of information about TikTok being spread. These are the facts.” The doc advises PRs to say, “TikTok has an American CEO, a head of security with decades of experience in the U.S. military and law enforcement, and a U.S. team that works diligently and responsibly on the consistent development of the security infrastructure. Four of the five seats on the Supervisory Board of our parent company are filled by some of the world’s most respected global investors.”

Further down within the doc, the corporate guides its PR employees to draw back from highlighting the age of its customers, who’re reputed to be youthful (and cooler) than these on some other social community. “The app is only for users aged 13 and over, according to our terms and conditions,” the steering recommends. “Therefore, in relation to our users, we may speak of young people, but not of children.”

The doc highlights an inner statistic, one which exhibits TikTok could, in actual fact, be for the Olds: “Most of our users are between 16 and 25 years old. 67 percent of users are older than 25.”

PRs are additionally helped in heading off tough questions on whether or not these younger customers might be spending mother and pa’s money on livestreaming presents. “We have a spending cap in the app,” the doc advises firm reps to say–earlier than including: “For internal information only: The spending cap is $1,000 per day.” (This data has not been beforehand printed.)

TikTok is likewise reticent to ask scrutiny of its algorithms and the way they decide what will get seen—or heard. In the “Music” part of the Master Messaging doc, highlighted in purple is a bullet level studying: “No algo talk – personalized content feed fuels new music discovery”.

The firm has additionally ready quotes for questions on previous moderation choices, together with leaked guidelines in 2019 that advised content material across the Tiananmen Square revolution wouldn’t be really helpful by means of the app. They dovetail with the corporate’s “downplay the China association” technique.

“In the early days we formulated our rules more restrictively in order to minimize conflicts,” PR representatives are really helpful to say within the Master Messaging doc. “As TikTok grew rapidly internationally last year, we realized that this was not the right approach. That’s why we gave our local teams a more prominent role in this process, as they have a more differentiated understanding of their respective markets. […] While we built our local teams over the past year, we have also abandoned various regulations that were not appropriate for individual markets.”

That’s echoed within the shorter Key Messages doc. “We’re a platform that’s nearly 3 years old and we’re operating in the scale of other big players. We take this responsibility seriously. In the early days, we made mistakes with our moderation policies and we take responsibility for them,” the doc advises PRs say. “Our local team has full autonomy to make decisions about our content policies and implementation here.”

The phrasing on content material moderation from each the Master and Key Messaging paperwork sounds similar to testimony given to the UK parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sports choose committee in September 2020 by Theo Bertram, TikTok’s director of presidency relations and public coverage in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Language PR employees are inspired to make use of round information privateness additionally sounds much like language utilized in letters to US Senators presently addressing considerations round TikTok’s information entry practices. “A lot of apps collect data, and we are on par with, or less than, many others,” the doc suggests PRs say. (This sentence, in European translation, seems with a remark of❗️❗️❗️ within the Key Messages doc.) “We believe the type of user data that we collect is in line with what our peers collect and in many cases is far less,” the doc continues. “For example, many peer companies collect very targeted location data. We don’t. We are happy to compare our practices to what others in the industry do. We take careful measures to protect that data from misuse.”

Version historical past on the Master Messaging doc suggests it has been produced by taking excerpts of different inner paperwork, together with these titled “TikTok Master Messaging – Europe,” “Commercial Messaging and FAQ,” “Ops Messaging and FAQ,” “Music Messaging and FAQ,” and “Marketing Messaging and FAQ.” Gizmodo didn’t get hold of entry to those paperwork.

TikTok didn’t reply questions concerning the paperwork. From its historical past in Google Docs, the Master Messaging doc appears to be the results of collaboration throughout a number of groups on the firm. It had been edited by almost a dozen completely different individuals all through its existence and included feedback from six present or former TikTok workers. The second, Key Messages, doc created in February 2021 was hosted on Lark, the productiveness suite developed by guardian firm ByteDance, contained feedback from three completely different customers.

One PR consultant for a competing huge tech firm says they’re shocked by the doc’s content material. “No one in PR wants a doc like this to end up in public, but the revealing thing here is not how many difficult topics the TikTok team are dealing with, rather it’s the lack of basic information the company is willing to let its PR team use to answer simple questions,” they are saying.

The lack of expertise places TikTok PR at a drawback, the tech PR claims. “A PR needs to be able to answer basic questions – even if to a scale such as ‘dozens’ or ‘hundreds’ – in order to be taken seriously when talking on more difficult topics.”