ByteDance Accused Of Stealing Content From Instagram And Snapchat, Here's Why!

ByteDance has reportedly stolen hundreds of thousands of content taken from Instagram, Snapchat and other social media. (photo: Doc. ByteDance)

JAKARTA - TikTok's parent company, ByteDance has reportedly stolen hundreds of thousands of content taken from Instagram, Snapchat and other social media to grow Flipagram's popularity in 2017.

Bytedance intentionally creates fake accounts, steals videos by deleting profiles, usernames, and other content from Instagram and other social media platforms, then uploads them to Flipagram without the user's consent or knowledge.

First revealed by BuzzFeed News, the company did this to make Flipagram, which ByteDance acquired in January 2017, become as popular as TikTok is today.

Flipagram allows users to create short video slideshows that integrate with music, a kind of simplified version of TikTok and other short-form video apps. This app has been renamed to Vigo Video.

This report was obtained by BuzzFeed News from four former ByteDance employees who said the content theft began shortly after the company acquired Flipagram.

One employee said that ByteDance's goal is to steal more than 10,000 videos a day. Meanwhile, two other employees explained how it was used to train and inform the "For You" algorithm, which is currently used by TikTok and its Chinese counterpart, Douyin.

At the time, it said ByteDance was looking at ways to train its algorithms on US-based content. The report also shows that ByteDance stole and uploaded content from Musical.ly.

In one document, a former employee explained that the stolen content could be used to test which video types perform best on the platform. The employee also noted that today's users can copy content to enhance their own videos and gain popularity.

Launching TechCrunch, Tuesday, April 5, ByteDance's plan did not go smoothly. According to former employees, several people have become aware of their content being posted on Flipagram and have contacted the company.

Knowing this, the employees were told to delete the fake account or give control of the account to the person who made the complaint.

For your information, Flipagram was founded in 2013 and allows users to create and share short videos as a kind of pre-cursor to TikTok.

The Flipagram app garnered popularity among young users and was at one point considered a major threat to Instagram.

However, ByteDance learned a lot from Flipagram, he finally chose to merge Musical.ly with TikTok and fired the Flipagram team in February 2018.