SAN FRANCISCO - A former executive at ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, has accused the technology giant of a “culture of lawlessness”, including stealing content from rival platforms Snapchat and Instagram in its early years, and called the company a “useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party”.
“The Committee maintained supreme access to all the company data, even data stored in the United States,” the complaint said. Mr Yu, who spent part of his ByteDance tenure working in its China offices, said he also witnessed engineers for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, tweak the algorithm to elevate content that expressed hatred for Japan. In an interview, he said the promotion of anti-Japanese sentiments, which would make it more prominent for users, was done without hesitation.