Yintao Yu points out that TikTok “stealed” the videos posted on other social networks to upload them to its own platform.
A former Bytedance executive sued the company, the parent company of Tiktok , in the United States , which he accuses of having fired him because he warned about alleged illegal practices.
Many Republican lawmakers want to ban TikTok in the United States . They claim that the platform allows Beijing to collect user data without their consent and influence their opinion, which the application denies.
stolen videos
According to the lawsuit filed in a San Francisco court on May 1, Yintao Yu discovered shortly after being hired in California in 2017 that ByteDance “stealed” videos posted on competing networks, Instagram and Snapchat, to upload to his own platform.
Yu, then ByteDance ‘s head of engineering in the US, said he alerted his hierarchy, to no avail, “and the theft of intellectual property continued unimpeded.” He was fired in 2018.
On Friday, the plaintiff filed a lawsuit accusing ByteDance of “serving as a propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party” (CCP).
Yu says he has seen the company highlight content “expressing hatred for Japan” and relegate content “expressing support for the Hong Kong protests” in favor of democracy.
According to the former employee, the PCC “permanently had supreme access to all company data, including data stored in the United States.”
“My client is the highest ByteDance executive to have spoken publicly,” Charles Jung, his lawyer, said Saturday.
“My client is concerned about the protection of US user data, the ethical conduct of the app, and the well-being of ByteDance employees .”