<p>Chinese short-video-making app TikTok's parent company ByteDance allegedly made fake accounts with content taken from Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms, a new report has claimed.</p>.<p>According to <em>BuzzFeed News</em>, the company then posted those fake accounts on the popular mobile app Flipagram to grow further.</p>.<p>"The China-based company scraped public accounts and then duplicated them on Flipagram, a predecessor to TikTok, according to four former employees and documents viewed by <em>BuzzFeed News</em>," the report said late on Monday.</p>.<p>Founded in 2013, Flipagram allowed users to create and share short videos as something of a TikTok precursor.</p>.<p>ByteDance allegedly took videos, usernames, pictures and more from the social media platforms and uploaded them to the app without users' consent or knowledge.</p>.<p>Internal documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News indicate that the scraping was seen as a "growth hack" for the company.</p>.<p>According to the former employee, the team's goal was to "scrape more than 10,000 videos a day in the highest priority countries".</p>.<p>The scraped content was used to train ByteDance's powerful "For You" personalisation algorithm on the US-based content.</p>.<p>"Today, the 'For You' algorithm powers both TikTok and its Chinese equivalent, Douyin," the report noted.</p>.<p>The report also said that ByteDance was scraping and uploading content from Musical.ly, which would later become TikTok as ByteDance acquired the company in 2017.</p>.<p>In a statement, a ByteDance spokesperson said: "ByteDance acquired Flipagram in 2017 and operated it, and subsequently Vigo, for a short time. Flipagram and Vigo ceased operations years ago and aren't connected to any current ByteDance products."</p>.<p>Short video-making platform TikTok has crossed one billion monthly active users around the world.</p>.<p>It has overtaken Facebook as the most downloaded social media app in the world.</p>.<p><strong>Check out the latest videos from <i data-stringify-type="italic">DH</i>:</strong></p>
<p>Chinese short-video-making app TikTok's parent company ByteDance allegedly made fake accounts with content taken from Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms, a new report has claimed.</p>.<p>According to <em>BuzzFeed News</em>, the company then posted those fake accounts on the popular mobile app Flipagram to grow further.</p>.<p>"The China-based company scraped public accounts and then duplicated them on Flipagram, a predecessor to TikTok, according to four former employees and documents viewed by <em>BuzzFeed News</em>," the report said late on Monday.</p>.<p>Founded in 2013, Flipagram allowed users to create and share short videos as something of a TikTok precursor.</p>.<p>ByteDance allegedly took videos, usernames, pictures and more from the social media platforms and uploaded them to the app without users' consent or knowledge.</p>.<p>Internal documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News indicate that the scraping was seen as a "growth hack" for the company.</p>.<p>According to the former employee, the team's goal was to "scrape more than 10,000 videos a day in the highest priority countries".</p>.<p>The scraped content was used to train ByteDance's powerful "For You" personalisation algorithm on the US-based content.</p>.<p>"Today, the 'For You' algorithm powers both TikTok and its Chinese equivalent, Douyin," the report noted.</p>.<p>The report also said that ByteDance was scraping and uploading content from Musical.ly, which would later become TikTok as ByteDance acquired the company in 2017.</p>.<p>In a statement, a ByteDance spokesperson said: "ByteDance acquired Flipagram in 2017 and operated it, and subsequently Vigo, for a short time. Flipagram and Vigo ceased operations years ago and aren't connected to any current ByteDance products."</p>.<p>Short video-making platform TikTok has crossed one billion monthly active users around the world.</p>.<p>It has overtaken Facebook as the most downloaded social media app in the world.</p>.<p><strong>Check out the latest videos from <i data-stringify-type="italic">DH</i>:</strong></p>