TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, scraped short-form videos, usernames, profile pictures, and profile descriptions from Instagram, Snapchat, and other sources and then uploaded them — without users’ knowledge or consent — to Flipagram, a TikTok predecessor, BuzzFeed News reported.
Four former ByteDance employees, all of whom worked on Flipagram (later renamed Vigo Video), and internal documents indicate the scraping was run by an engineering team in China and began soon after ByteDance acquired Flipagram in January 2017.
Read the full report: Buzzfeed News
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