Ex-ByteDance Executive Accuses Company of ‘Lawlessness’

A former govt at ByteDance, the Chinese firm that owns TikTok, has accused the know-how large of a “culture of lawlessness,” together with stealing content material from rival platforms Snapchat and Instagram in its early years, and known as the corporate a “useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party.”

The claims had been a part of a wrongful dismissal swimsuit filed on Friday by Yintao Yu, who was the pinnacle of engineering for ByteDance’s U.S. operations from August 2017 to November 2018. The criticism, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, says Mr. Yu was fired as a result of he raised considerations a few “worldwide scheme” to steal and revenue from different firms’ mental property.

Among essentially the most putting claims in Mr. Yu’s lawsuit is that ByteDance’s places of work in Beijing had a particular unit of Chinese Communist Party members generally known as the Committee, which monitored the corporate’s apps, “guided how the company advanced core Communist values” and possessed a “death switch” that would flip off the Chinese apps totally.

“The Committee maintained supreme access to all the company data, even data stored in the United States,” the criticism mentioned.

Mr. Yu’s claims, which describe how ByteDance operated 5 years in the past, are surfacing as TikTok faces intense nationwide scrutiny over its relationship with its father or mother firm and China’s potential affect on the platform. The video app, which is utilized by greater than 150 million Americans, has turn into vastly well-liked for memes and leisure. But lawmakers and U.S. officers are involved that the app is passing delicate details about Americans to Beijing.

In March, a congressional committee grilled TikTok’s chief govt, Shou Chew, in regards to the app’s Chinese possession. Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not too long ago mentioned that TikTok “screams out with national security concerns.” More than two dozen states have banned TikTok from authorities units since November.

TikTok didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

In his criticism, Mr. Yu, 36, mentioned that as TikTok sought to draw customers in its early days, ByteDance engineers copied movies and posts from Snapchat and Instagram with out permission after which posted them to the app. He additionally claimed that ByteDance “systematically created fabricated users” — basically a military of bots — to spice up engagement numbers, a apply that Mr. Yu mentioned he flagged to his superiors.

Mr. Yu says he raised these considerations with Zhu Wenjia, who was in command of the TikTok algorithm, however that Mr. Zhu was “dismissive” and remarked that it was “not a big deal.”

Mr. Yu, who spent a part of his ByteDance tenure working in its China places of work, mentioned he additionally witnessed engineers for Douyin, the Chinese model of TikTok, tweak the algorithm to raise content material that expressed hatred for Japan. In an interview, he mentioned that the promotion of anti-Japanese sentiments, which might make it extra outstanding for customers, was performed with out hesitation.

“There was no debate,” he mentioned. “They just did it.”

The lawsuit additionally accused ByteDance engineers engaged on Chinese apps of demoting content material that expressed help for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, whereas making extra outstanding criticisms of the protests.

As an instance of what was described because the “lawlessness” inside the corporate, the lawsuit says the founding father of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, facilitated bribes to Lu Wei, a senior authorities official charged with web regulation. Chinese media on the time lined the trial of Lu Wei, who was charged in 2018 and subsequently convicted of bribery, however there was no point out of who had paid the bribes.

TikTok has sought to persuade lawmakers that it operates at an arm’s size from ByteDance and that the Chinese authorities has no affect or particular entry to the app. It has been engaged on a pricey plan to retailer American consumer information on servers operated by Oracle within the United States, referred to as Project Texas.

Mr. Yu, who was born and raised in China and now lives in San Francisco, mentioned within the interview that in his time with the corporate, American consumer information on TikTok was saved within the United States. But engineers in China had entry to it, he mentioned.

The geographic location of servers is “irrelevant,” he mentioned, as a result of engineers might be a continent away however nonetheless have entry. During his tenure on the firm, he mentioned, sure engineers had “backdoor” entry to consumer information.

His lawsuit calls for misplaced earnings, punitive damages and 220,000 ByteDance shares that had not vested by the point he was dismissed. The criticism doesn’t cite a selected greenback quantity in damages, however the shares alone could be price tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. The case was filed after a number of years of mediation with the corporate failed.

Mr. Yu is being represented by Charles Jung, a San Francisco lawyer who makes a speciality of employment disputes.