When it comes to bringing their own app forward, companies like to take the route of copying things from their competitors. Loud BuzzFeedNews TikTok owner ByteDance may have gone a little further to push TikTok’s predecessor, Flipagram.
Four former employees allege that they copied content from public profiles on Instagram, Snapchat and others and pushed it into fake profiles to market their own app. So they went with the same tactic that almost every generic scam account on Instagram uses to extract information from you via direct message. It is said to be in the hundreds of thousands, with up to 10,000 videos being uploaded to Flipagram from other platforms every day.
So-called scraping is prohibited on both Instagram and Snapchat and could theoretically lead to legal problems. ByteDance commented on allegations to BuzzFeedNews that it merely acquired Flipagram and that the incidents before it were unrelated to current ByteDance products.
–
This article contains affiliate links. Clicking on it will take you directly to the provider. If you decide to make a purchase there, we will receive a small commission. Nothing changes in the price for you. Thank you for your support!
–
