Ex ByteDance exec alleges TikTok used bots to increase engagement

The former head of engineering at ByteDance, Yintao Yu, has claimed that TikTok’s owner used bots and stole content to inflate the engagement on the app.

As per The New York Times, Yintao Yu has filed a lawsuit and is suing the company for his wrongful termination. The former ByteDance employee claims he was wrongly fired from the company because he resisted company practices like stealing content from other leading apps, such as, Instagram and Snapchat to increase engagement and users.

The lawsuit claims that China-based employees could access the data of US-based users. In addition to that, Yu said that during his time of employment, ByteDance’s Beijing offices had a department named the Committee, which was actually a special unit of Chinese Communist Party members that tracked ByteDance apps, including TikTok.

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Moreover, the company used bots to increase TikTok's engagement when it was initially launched as Musical.ly.

ByteDance has responded to the claims as baseless and emailed a statement to The New York Times saying, “Mr Yu worked for ByteDance Inc for less than a year, and his employment ended in July 2018. During his brief time at the company, he worked on an app called Flipagram, which was discontinued years ago for business reasons.”

Considering how TikTok is already battling cases regarding its ban in the US, the new claims can complicate things for the short-video platform.