A former director of ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, accused the social network of subservience to the Communist Party of China (CPC) and a series of illegalities in a lawsuit in which it seeks compensation for unfair dismissal, filed last week. in the Superior Court of San Francisco, in the United States.
According to information from The New York Times, Yintao Yu, head of engineering at ByteDance in the United States between 2017 and 2018, called the company “a useful propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party” in the action.
He claimed he was fired because he raised concerns about a “worldwide scheme” to steal and profit from other companies’ intellectual property. In the suit, the former director seeks unpaid wages, damages and 220,000 shares of ByteDance, which could represent tens of millions of dollars, according to the New York Times.
Yu pointed out in the lawsuit that a special unit of CCP members, called the Committee, operated from ByteDance’s Beijing offices to monitor the company’s apps and “guide how the company should promote core communist values” and had a “death switch” , able to take down Chinese apps.
“The Committee had supreme access to all the company’s data, even those stored in the United States”, denounced the former director.
Yu reported that when TikTok first launched, ByteDance engineers copied videos and posts from Snapchat and Instagram without permission and posted them on the Chinese app. Afterwards, the tool also created fake users to boost engagement numbers, as reported in the lawsuit.
The former director also claimed that engineers at Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, changed the app’s algorithm to highlight content with expressions of hatred against Japan and hide posts that endorsed pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Yu further reported that ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming “facilitated” bribes to Lu Wei, an official of the Chinese dictatorship in charge of internet regulation, who was later convicted of receiving bribes.
ByteDance refuted the accusations in a message sent to the New York Times, classifying them as “baseless allegations”.
“Mr. Yu worked for ByteDance for less than a year and his contract ended in July 2018. During his brief time with the company, he worked on an app called Flipagram, which was discontinued years ago for business reasons,” the company said. .
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