In a lawsuit filed Friday against TikTok owner ByteDance, former head of engineering Yintao Yu alleged the Chinese company stole content from Snapchat and Instagram in order to boost TikTok engagement.
A former employee of TikTok owner ByteDance who is taking the company to court over wrongful termination has alleged it stole content from Snapchat and Instagram in order to boost TikTok engagement.
The claims, reported by The New York Times, were filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Friday by Yintao Yu, former head of engineering for ByteDance’s US operations between August 2017 and November 2018.
Mr Yu claims he was fired from his position because he had raised concerns about ByteDance stealing and profiting from other companies’ intellectual property to increase TikTok engagement and user numbers.
In news that will likely further trouble US lawmakers who have been moving to ban TikTok in the US due to concerns about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference in its parent company, Yu also alleged that at the time of his employment, ByteDance’s Beijing offices had a special unit of Chinese Communist Party members nicknamed the Committee, which tracked ByteDance apps including TikTok.
