TikTok remains to be preventing to stay operational within the United States, however a brand new lawsuit might complicate issues even additional for the company. A former ByteDance government has alleged TikTok’s proprietor used bots and stolen content material to inflate the app’s engagement.
The lawsuit, filed by former head of engineering Yintao Yu and reported by The New York Times, claims that ByteDance wrongly fired Yu after he pushed again on company practices like stealing different apps’ materials. It additionally claims that ByteDance acted as a “useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party,” and that China-based staff might entry US customers’ information.
As The New York Times factors out, Yu’s allegations “describe how ByteDance operated five years ago” and are available after “several years of mediation.” Still, the claims are nonetheless possible to gas much more scrutiny for TikTok, which is dealing with the prospect of a nationwide ban within the United States. Lawmakers and different officers have claimed that TikTok is a nationwide safety risk and that the app can’t be trusted to defend the info of US customers.
Yu’s allegations might intensify these considerations. The lawsuit particulars “a special unit of Chinese Communist Party members” at ByteDance places of work in Beijing who “guided how the company advanced core Communist values.” He additionally alleges that ByteDance staff manipulated Douyin, the Chinese model of TikTok, to suppress content material about protests in Hong Kong and “elevate content that expressed hatred for Japan.”
Some of Yu’s claims additionally relate immediately to TikTok. Notably, he claims that ByteDance engineers stole common content material from apps like Instagram and Snapchat and put the movies onto TikTok. He additionally alleges that the company used bot accounts to juice the app’s engagement metrics when it was simply beginning out and making an attempt to acquire a foothold within the US. (Yu left the company in November 2018, shortly after ByteDance rebranded Musical.ly as TikTok.)
A spokesperson for ByteDance instructed Engadget: “We plan to vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint. Mr. Yu worked for ByteDance Inc. for less than a year and his employment ended in July 2018. During his brief time at the company, he worked on an app called Flipagram, which was discontinued years ago for business reasons.” On the allegation of scraping, additionally they mentioned: “ByteDance is committed to respecting the intellectual property of other companies, and we acquire data in accordance with industry practices and our global policy.”
TikTok has repeatedly tried to downplay its ties to ByteDance and China, together with in CEO Shou Zi Chew’s congressional testimony in March. The company has additionally devoted greater than a billion {dollars} into Project Texas, which goals to wall off TikTok’s US consumer information from the remainder of ByteDance in an effort to allay the considerations of US regulators.
Update 05/12/23: Added a press release from ByteDance.
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