The ByteDance logo displayed on a mobile phone.
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A former engineering executive at ByteDance in the U.S. said the company fired him after he expressed concerns to management that the company was taking user content from other platforms, primarily Instagram and Snapchat.
The controversy comes as ByteDance-owned app TikTok faces growing calls from U.S. lawmakers for a nationwide ban amid concerns that the Chinese government could exert influence over it.
In a complaint filed Friday in San Francisco state court, Yintao “Roger” Yu said the Chinese tech company participated in a “global scheme to steal and profit from other people’s content” without a license.
When Yu raised these concerns with higher management, he said they dismissed them and demanded that he conceal illegal schemes, especially from employees in the U.S., which has stricter intellectual property laws and class actions.
He was later fired by ByteDance in November 2018.
Yu also said in the complaint that ByteDance created fake users to inflate its metrics and serve as a useful propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
He is seeking a court order prohibiting ByteDance from scraping content from other social media platforms.
In response to the complaint, ByteDance said, “We plan to strongly oppose allegations and allegations that we believe are baseless. Mr. Yu has been with ByteDance for less than a year.”
ByteDance also responded to the scraping allegations, saying the data it obtained was in line with industry practices and its global policies.
in April, Montana Lawmakers passed a bill banning its short-form TikTok app from operating in the state.
In March, U.S. lawmakers questioned TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi about potential Chinese influencesaying its short videos are harming children’s mental health, reflecting bipartisan concerns about the app’s reach over Americans.