WF-SZNX2Q
ByteDance Allegedly Trained "For You" Algorithm Using Content Scraped without Consent from Other Social Platforms
ByteDance allegedly scraped short-form videos, usernames, profile pictures, and descriptions of accounts on Instagram, Snapchat, and other sources, and uploaded them without consent on Flipagram, TikTok’s predecessor, in order to improve its “For You” algorithm's performance on American users.
- Date it happened
- 2017-01-15
- Organisation involved
- ByteDance
- Product, system or model
- The "For You" personalization algorithm powers TikTok by recommending content that users are likely to enjoy. ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, allegedly scraped content from other social media site
Where this came from
Attribution
This incident was imported from AI Incident Database and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.