Nytimes chinese6/11/2023 Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, has claimed that the Chinese government has never demanded data from the app and said the company would refuse to hand it over if it was asked to do so. He also alleged that Zhang Yiming, ByteDance’s founder, arranged bribes to Chinese government officials. Mr Yu, who said he was filing his case after negotiations with ByteDance failed, told the New York Times that engineers had “backdoor” access to user data wherever it was stored. He said he was fired for raising concerns about the practice and is suing for unfair dismissal. He also accused the company of flooding the service with fake users. He claimed that in the app’s early days, engineers at ByteDance would steal videos from Snapchat and Instagram and post them on the app in order to artificially stimulate growth on the app. Mr Yu’s claims relate to how ByteDance operated before he was dismissed almost five years ago, and before TikTok became one of the world’s most popular apps. The app has sought to allay fears that it could be used as a spying or propaganda tool by Beijing, saying it does not store data in the country and has restricted Chinese staff from accessing overseas data. TikTok has been banned on government devices in the US, UK and Europe over security concerns and the White House has threatened the app with a wider ban if its Chinese investors do not sell their stakes. The lawsuit comes on the eve of TikTok sponsoring Saturday’s Eurovision song contest, a major marketing push for the viral video app that will see the BBC broadcast part of its coverage exclusively on the service. He said the committee had access to a “death switch” that could turn off its Chinese apps and that engineers at the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, Douyin, were directed to adjust the app’s algorithm to promote anti-Japan video and demote material supporting protestors in Hong Kong. Mr Yu, who claims he was fired from ByteDance for blowing the whistle on a global scheme to steal intellectual property from rival services, said the Chinese committee had “supreme access” to all of the company’s data. TikTok’s Chinese parent company had a committee of Communist Party members installed to “advance core Communist values”, a former executive has claimed, piling fresh allegations on the company as it faces a US ban.Ī US lawsuit brought by Yintao Yu, the head of engineering at ByteDance’s US division until November 2018, called the company a “useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party” that bred a “culture of lawlessness”.
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