Sites Publishing The News 1/2 Former employees of ByteDance , the Chinese parent company of TikTok, claim that the company placed pro - China propaganda in its now-defunct U.S. news app , TopBuzz . BuzzFeed News reports that four former employees of ByteDance , TikTok’s parent company , claim that the company used its now-defunct English-language news app TopBuzz to push pro - China messages to Americans. The former employees , all of whom worked for TopBuzz , claim that the company told them to place specific pro - China messaging in the app . ByteDance denies these claims. (Photo...