Content theft, bot armies and death switches: serious allegations against Tiktok

In the US, Tiktok is currently under pressure. A ban is imminent. The app of the Chinese group Bytedance, according to the accusation, poses a threat to national security. The data of US users is also not secure.

The lawsuit filed by a former Bytedance employee is grist to the mill of Tiktok critics – not only in the USA. Because Yintao Yu, former head of technology at the Chinese group, raises serious allegations against Tiktok mother Bytedance.

The background is that Yu feels wrongly fired and has therefore filed a lawsuit against Bytedance. In this lawsuit, he accuses the group, among other things, of being guilty of intellectual theft by allegedly stealing content from other apps such as Instagram and Snapchat.

With this content theft and its own bot army, Tiktok is said to have tried to artificially inflate the user numbers and engagement with the app at the beginning, according to Yu Report of the New York Times explained.

What is probably even more serious for the future of Tiktok in the USA and Europe are the allegations regarding access to user data. Here, according to Yu, there is a back door through which data stored on US servers can also be accessed.

This, flanked by allegations that the Chinese Communist Party (CP) has installed employees with far-reaching competencies in the Bytedance headquarters, should not necessarily reduce concerns in the USA.

According to Yu, there is even a so-called “death switch” with which KP members can switch off the lights in all of the Chinese company’s apps at the push of a button.

Also strange: The CCP seems to be using Bytedance as a kind of propaganda tool. Content that is explicitly aimed at Japan is said to have been deliberately given more reach.

Postings about the protests in Hong Kong, on the other hand, were limited in their reach. However, this approach was probably limited to the Chinese Tiktok variant Douyin.

Bytedance meanwhile has the allegations to Engadget rejected. These are unfounded. You worked for Bytedance for less than a year in 2017/2018 on an app called Flipagram. This was ultimately discontinued.

However, Bytedance and Yu have different opinions about the exact end of the collaboration. According to Bytedance, Yu stopped working for the company in July 2018. Yu insists he only left Bytedance in November 2018.

One must also include in the assessment that Yu’s allegations are almost five years old. Bytedance has since made some changes, like the standard writes. It is unclear whether the accusations can now be maintained at all.

Tiktok has long sought to downplay its ties to the Chinese mother. It was only in March 2023 that Tiktok CEO Shou Zi Chew emphasized before the US Congress that his company is sealing off user data on the US servers from access from China.