Yintao Yu has sued ByteDance in a San Francisco court docket as political strain has been rising within the US to ban TikTok. Critics say the favored platform permits Beijing to covertly gather customers’ knowledge and affect their opinions — one thing the corporate denies.
“We plan to vigorously oppose what we believe are baseless claims and allegations in this complaint,” a ByteDance spokesperson mentioned in an e-mail to AFP.
In his swimsuit, which was filed this month, Yu says that he found shortly after being employed in 2017 that ByteDance “was stealing” movies revealed on rival websites like Instagram and Snapchat and presenting them as its personal.
Yu, who was ByteDance’s US head of engineering, says he notified firm leaders about the issue, however the “intellectual property infringement continued unabated.”
He was fired in November 2018.
Discover the tales of your curiosity
ByteDance mentioned Yu labored for ByteDance Inc. for lower than a 12 months and that in his time on the firm he “worked on an app called Flipagram, which was discontinued years ago for business reasons”.“ByteDance is committed to respecting the intellectual property of other companies, and we acquire data in accordance with industry practices and our global policy,” the corporate added.
On Friday, Yu submitted an modification to his authentic criticism — which was filed May 1 — accusing ByteDance of serving “as a useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party.”
The difficulty of entry to non-public knowledge on American customers has aroused rising concern amongst US authorities. In response, the corporate says it shops that knowledge solely on US-based servers.
At a congressional listening to in Washington in late March, TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew assured largely hostile US legislators that Beijing had no entry to the info.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com