Fired ByteDance Exec Says China Exerted ‘Supreme’ Data Control
A former executive at TikTok parent ByteDance Inc. who was fired in 2018 said in a lawsuit that the Chinese Communist Party had a special office within the company that gave it “supreme access” to all data, a backdoor channel that he said persisted even after US user data was walled off from individual engineers in China.
In a complaint filed Friday in California state court, Yintao “Roger” Yu said he was terminated from his job as head of engineering in the US in retaliation for his complaints to supervisors about “brazenly unlawful conduct” at the company.
ByteDance called the allegations “baseless” and said it will vigorously fight the suit.
“ByteDance is committed to respecting the intellectual property of other companies, and we acquire data in accordance with industry practices and our global policy,” a spokesperson said in a statement, which noted that Yu worked for the company for less than a year.
Yu alleges his bosses were dismissive when he voiced concern that ByteDance was stealing copyrighted content from other platforms including Instagram and Snapchat, as well as fabricating users to exaggerate its metrics and help China's Communist Party spread propaganda to a larger audience.
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He also said he was “struck by the misdirection” of TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew's March testimony before Congress to allay national security concerns about the platform's ties to China in light of his own on-the-job knowledge that the CCP maintained a “backdoor channel” to US user data.
It was known within the company that a special government-controlled committee had a significant role even though it did not work for ByteDance, Yu said.
“The Committee maintained
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