A former head of engineering at Bytedance in the US has stated the corporate discharged him after he voiced concern to administration that it was taking consumer content material from different platforms, primarily Instagram and Snapchat.
The dispute comes at a time when ByteDance-owned app TikTok faces rising requires a nationwide ban from some U.S. lawmakers concerning considerations about potential Chinese language authorities affect over it.
Yintao “Roger” Yu stated in a grievance filed on Friday in San Francisco state court docket that the Chinese language tech firm engaged in a “worldwide scheme to steal and revenue from the content material of others” with out looking for permission.
When Yu raised these considerations to larger administration, he stated they dismissed them and requested him to cover the unlawful program, particularly from workers in the US, because it had stricter IP legal guidelines and sophistication actions.
He was later dismissed by ByteDance in November 2018.
Yu additionally stated within the grievance that ByteDance created fabricated customers to magnify its metrics and served as a helpful propaganda device for the Chinese language Communist Social gathering (CCP).
He’s looking for a court docket order that might prohibit ByteDance from scraping content material from different social media platforms.
In response to the grievance, ByteDance stated, “We plan to vigorously oppose what we imagine are baseless claims and allegations. Mr. Yu labored for ByteDance for lower than a 12 months.”
ByteDance additionally responded to the scraping allegations, saying it acquired knowledge according to business observe and its world coverage.
In April, Montana lawmakers handed a invoice to ban its short-form TikTok app from working within the state.
In March, U.S. lawmakers questioned TikTok’s Chief Government Shou Zi Chew about potential Chinese language affect, saying its brief movies have been damaging kids’s psychological well being, reflecting bipartisan considerations concerning the app’s energy over People.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
