In a recent lawsuit filed in the San Francisco Superior Court, Yintao Yu, the former head of engineering for ByteDance’s US operations, who was fired from the company, has made multiple accusations against the tech giant. The legal complaint was filed on Friday (local time).
On Friday, a former executive who was terminated from ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, made various allegations against the tech giant.
Among the accusations, the executive claimed that ByteDance stole content from competitors like Instagram and Snapchat, and acted as a “propaganda tool” for the Chinese government by manipulating content to advance the country’s interests.
Yintao Yu, who served as the head of engineering for ByteDance’s US operations between August 2017 and November 2018, made the accusations in a legal complaint filed in the San Francisco Superior Court earlier this month as part of a wrongful termination lawsuit. Yu alleges that he was terminated for exposing “wrongful conduct” at the company.
In the complaint, Yu alleges the Chinese government monitored ByteDance’s work from within its Beijing headquarters and provided guidance on advancing “core communist values.”
Yu also said government officials had the ability to turn off the Chinese version of ByteDance’s apps, and maintained access to all company data, including information stored in the United States.
TikTok vehemently denies ever providing U.S. user data to the Chinese government, and asserts that it would never comply with such requests. In order to evade a potential ban, the company is now pushing to store all U.S. user data on servers managed by the tech giant Oracle.
Yu’s accusations also claim that the company resorted to creating bogus user accounts to manipulate engagement metrics including programming them to “like” and “follow” real accounts
Additionally Yu also says ByteDance used bots to inflate TikTok’s app engagement metrics when it was launched as Musical.ly. According to the Times,
Yu says he raised concerns with a senior staffer in charge of the TikTok algorithm but was rebuffed and told that his worries were “not a big deal.”.
Yintao Yu has filed a lawsuit in which he is seeking compensation for punitive damages, lost earnings, and 220,000 unvested ByteDance shares that he claims were owed to him at the time of his termination
TikTok has faced significant scrutiny from US lawmakers in recent months over concerns that ByteDance’s data practices could jeopardize the personal data of American users.
Lawmakers at both the federal and state levels have raised the issue of potential sharing of American data with the Chinese government.
In March, TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, faced intense questioning from a congressional committee regarding the widespread concerns.
