And … hold onto your hats … TikTok served as a “propaganda tool” for the Chinese government. Wow.
15 MAY 2023 — A former executive fired from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance made a raft of accusations against the tech giant this past Friday, including that it stole content from competitors like Instagram and Snapchat, and served as a “propaganda tool” for the Chinese government by suppressing or promoting content favorable to the country’s interests.
Yintao Yu, who served as the head of engineering for ByteDance’s U.S. operations from August 2017 to November 2018, filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court for San Francisco County earlier this month alleging wrongful termination for serving as a whistleblower exposing what Yu considered to be unethical and illegal practices.
Among the most striking claims in Yu’s lawsuit is that ByteDance’s offices in Beijing had a special unit of Chinese Communist Party members sometimes referred to as the Committee, which monitored the company’s apps and content, “guided how the company advanced core Communist values” and possessed a “death switch” that could turn off the Chinese apps entirely.
Yu says he raised concerns about intellectual property with Wenjia Zhu, who was then the senior vice president of engineering. “When informed of Mr. Yu’s concerns with the program, Mr. Zhu was dismissive of them, and the intellectual property infringement continued unabated,” the complaint said.
