The former head of engineering development for ByteDancen in the United States has filed a lawsuit against the company. The complaint accuses TikTok of stealing content from other platforms and censoring. On Douyin, the Chinese version, the algorithm promotes anti-Japanese content and criticism of the Hong Kong protests. The company is lobbying in the United States and Europe against the adoption of regulatory measures.
San Francisco () – In Beijing, inside the headquarters of ByteDance, the technology giant that owns TikTok, there is a special committee of the Chinese Communist Party that monitors the company’s applications. This is stated by Yu Yintao, a former executive of the company, in a complaint for unfair dismissal that was filed in San Francisco. In his accusation, the Chinese technician – who was responsible for the engineering development of ByteDance in the United States from August 2017 to November 2018 – claims that the Party committee controls even a device capable of completely shutting down Chinese applications and accessing unlimited access to the database, including data stored in the United States.
Yu Yintao claims he was fired for raising concerns about a global project to steal the intellectual property of other companies. The executive accused ByteDance of copying content from other platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram at an early stage without consent, and then posting it on its own app, in addition to “systematically creating make-believe users” to increase engagement.
TikTok is one of the biggest social networks globally right now, but the app in Europe and the United States is raising concerns over issues like national security, privacy, misinformation, and Chinese propaganda. A Beijing state-owned company owns 1% of ByteDance’s shares, but has a member on its board of directors. In recent years, the Chinese government has been buying shares in Internet giants and appointing members to their boards to tighten control.
TikTok is launching an expensive plan to build data centers abroad, in the United States and Ireland, to comply with US and European regulations and show that the company operates independently of Beijing’s influence. But some incidents show that China still has access to data abroad. Earlier this year, for example, ByteDance admitted that some of its employees, two of them in China, have tracked down some journalists in the United States.
This month TikTok censored a documentary about Hong Kong activist and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, who was jailed on charges related to the national security law. After the news broke in the media, TikTok reinstated the removed content, stating that “TikTok does not moderate content based on political sensitivities.” In March, ByteDance CEO Shou Zi Chew defended the company in a US congressional hearing, dodging questions about ultimate ownership of the company, Chinese Communist Party control and concerns about the privacy raised by legislators.
On the contrary, Yu reveals in his complaint that the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, is being used as a propaganda tool by the Chinese authorities. He also accused the company’s engineers of using the algorithms to promote anti-Japan hate content and make criticism of the Hong Kong protests more apparent on Douyin.
Yu claimed that TikTok founder Zhang Yiming bribed Lu Wei, deputy head of the Communist Party of China’s Propaganda Department, nicknamed the “Internet Czar”, because he was responsible for regulating the Internet. Lu Wei was fired in 2017, but the official media never reported who made the payment in the corruption case in which he was accused.
ByteDance responded to Yu Yintao’s complaint by calling it “baseless claims and accusations”.
The United States and the European Union have banned TikTok on the work devices of public officials for security reasons. For its part, ByteDance has increased lobbying efforts in the US and has invested large sums of money -13 million dollars since 2019- to convince legislators and avoid new restrictions.
