The website doesn't seem to mention anywhere that it's from ByteDance?
Also from the terms of service:
"You hereby grant to us, our affiliates and our third party partners (“SPRING Parties”) an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable, perpetual and worldwide license, to reproduce, use, and modify Your Content in connection with the provision and improvement of the Services and its underlying technologies, as well as for the SPRING Parties' respective business operations, in each case, to the extent permitted by applicable laws."
hard to tell if they are indeed Bytedance. but given Bytedance and Tencent has HUGE Singapore HQ and notorious status of SG being a proxy for China, I would not be surprised if this is indeed Bytedance in disguise
even their CEO from Singapore is a puppet hire. The one that went to all the senate hearing is not the one calling all the shots. He was hired just so bytedance can keep playing the soundbite 'our ceo is not from china'.
I went on to read to the Terms and Conditions further and was relived to find no mention of "oH yeah! if you use it for longer than a month, you owe us your life and your kids will be forever indebted to the great emperor behind the wall."
At this point in time T&Cs are a generic template that stretches into a closed bubble trying to defend against any legal action. There should be a "dontsuewecandowhatever" copyright-like legend and be done with the bs.
Also from the terms of service:
"You hereby grant to us, our affiliates and our third party partners (“SPRING Parties”) an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, transferable, perpetual and worldwide license, to reproduce, use, and modify Your Content in connection with the provision and improvement of the Services and its underlying technologies, as well as for the SPRING Parties' respective business operations, in each case, to the extent permitted by applicable laws."