ByteDance Inc.’s former head of engineering in the US said in a lawsuit he was fired for voicing concerns to management that the TikTok owner was stealing copyrighted content from other platforms including Instagram and Snapchat. He also alleges the company fabricated users to exaggerate its metrics and help the China’s Communist Party spread propaganda to a larger audience.
Yintao “Roger” Yu said he learned soon after he joined the company in 2017 that ByteDance had for years undertaken a “worldwide scheme (including in California) to steal and profit from the copyrighted works of others,” according to his complaint filed Friday in San Francisco state court.
He also discovered that the company was programming fabricated users to “like” and “follow” real user accounts to boost the engagement metrics relied on by potential investors, according to the complaint.
Yu alleges the company was driven by a “culture of lawlessness” that focused on growth at all costs.
“He was surprised by the brazenly unlawful conduct within the company, which was euphemistically excused as ‘entrepreneurship,’” according to the complaint.
When Yu reported his concerns to higher-ups they were dismissive or asked him to hide the illegal activity, and he was eventually terminated in late 2018 after a medical leave, according to the suit, which identifies one supervisor who was in “a position to retaliate” against him as Kelly Zhang, who is now ByteDance China’s chief executive officer.
TikTok has been under intense scrutiny from Congress and a federal national security review over concerns about potential influence from the Chinese government because ByteDance is based in China. Multiple bills have been introduced that would limit or ban the app in the US.
As recently as this month in a letter to Congress, the company said it “has never shared” any US user data with the Chinese government, and wouldn’t if requested to do so. TikTok says it is in the process of walling off its sensitive US operations into a separate entity with relevant data kept on Oracle Corp.’s domestic servers.
ByteDance representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
ByteDance relied on software to strip video from competitors’ websites to make its service appear more popular with users, according to the complaint. “These actions were taken without the permission of the content creators and represented an unlawful effort to gain an edge against entrenched online video hosting websites,” according to the complaint.
Concerned about ByteDance’s skirting of “legal and ethical lines,” and the potential liability for the theft, Yu says he repeatedly raised objections, including to a senior vice president of engineering who reported directly to ByteDance CEO Yiming Zhang. But the senior vice president dismissed his concerns and the infringement continued, according to the complaint.
Yu is seeking a court order directing ByteDance to stop scraping social media content that belongs to others.
The lawsuit also details Yu’s objection to the company’s treatment of an unidentified employee suffering from depression. He says he lodged a complaint with ByteDance’s head of human resources about an illegal plan to fire the employee.
Yu, a resident of California, was hired with stock options and a guaranteed payment of $600,000 for the intellectual property of his own company, Tank Exchange, with the condition that he stayed with ByteDance for two years, according to the complaint.
ByteDance claims it notified Yu that his termination was due a reduction in headcount, but he argues he never received any notices, according to the suit. In November 2018, he was terminated without the stock option award which he says had vested. In 2019, he filed a discrimination complaint with California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, according to the suit.
The case is Yu v. ByteDance Inc., CGC-23-606246, California Superior Court, San Francisco County.
--With assistance from Alex Barinka.
