Flipagram, the precursor to today’s hit app TikTok, is said to have stolen content from Instagram and Snapchat. Parent company ByteDance only partially denies it.
the essentials in brief
- A few years ago, TikTok only existed in its original form under the name Flipagram.
- In order to build up reach, the app is said to have stolen content from competing platforms.
- Meanwhile, parent company ByteDance has distanced itself from the allegations.
It is common practice in the industry that large social media platforms copy each other from time to time. With Flipagram, a precursor to TikTok, however, content is said to have been stolen from the competition. Instagram, Snapchat and Co. were used here.
TikTok’s parent company denies — partially
Flipagram is a photo and video collage platform that was founded in 2013 as a competitor to Instagram. Five years later, in 2017, the app was then taken over by the Chinese TikTok parent ByteDance. The data theft is said to have happened around this time, according to research by BuzzFeed News.
The information relates to internal documents and the statements of four former Flipagram employees. Accordingly, content, profile pictures and descriptions are said to have been taken over by the competition. Apparently, up to 10,000 videos per day were copied onto the company’s own platform during this scraping process.
Not too much later, ByteDance finally shut down the app and took over content and features for what was then Musical.ly, which was then rebuilt into TikTok shortly thereafter. The parent company comments the situation to BuzzFeed denial. Flipagram was only taken over in 2017, previous incidents had no connection with current ByteDance products.
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