Former ByteDance employees say the company scraped Instagram, Snap, and others to make fake accounts on TikTok predecessor Flipagram, later renamed Vigo Video
The Flipagram detail matters because it predates TikTok itself: it suggests the scraping-and-fake-account behavior long attributed to ByteDance's growth machine was in place before its flagship app existed, giving regulators a longer track record to weigh.
First-order effects
Instagram and Snap are the named victims here — their content was allegedly harvested without consent to populate Flipagram (later Vigo Video), making them potential complainants in any inquiry into ByteDance's early US growth.
ByteDance now faces a fourth distinct insider allegation in under a year, each sourced to ex-employees, deepening the credibility problem as it defends TikTok against data-access claims.
Second-order effects
Platforms that were scraped — Instagram and Snap chief among them — face pressure to harden their APIs and anti-scraping enforcement, since the same harvesting could target today's apps.
The accumulating ex-employee record strengthens the hand of US officials weighing restrictions on TikTok, because each disclosure converts an abstract national-security concern into documented corporate conduct.
Third-order effects
If insider disclosures remain the only reliable window into ByteDance's operations, accountability for its US businesses will keep arriving through litigation and leaks rather than audits — a structure regulators may respond to by demanding independent oversight.
Growth built on scraped content and fake accounts is a textbook case for why identity verification and proof-of-personhood standards are moving from fringe idea to platform-infrastructure requirement.
The trend: ByteDance's US history is being assembled piece by piece by former employees and one reporter, with each disclosure widening the gap between the company's denials and its documented conduct.
In 2017, ByteDance scraped content from Instagram & Snap and used it to make fake accounts on Flipagram, a BD-owned TikTok predecessor, according to former employees and documents. One source says the scraping affected hundreds of thousands of accounts. https://www.buzzfeednews.c…
ByteDance scraped public accounts and then duplicated them on Flipagram, a predecessor to TikTok, according to four former employees and documents viewed by @BuzzFeedNews. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
How many TikTok users have posted with surprise over a staggering number of views? I see that all the time. Turns out the numbers might just be bullshit, a ByteDance growth hack to manipulate users into believing they were “more popular than they were.” https://www.buzzfeednews.c…
SCOOP from @ebakerwhite: ByteDance scraped videos, user names, profile pictures, and bios from Instagram, Snapchat, and other sources without people's knowledge or consent, and uploaded them to TikTok's predecessor, Flipagram, in 2017 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Of course they did || TikTok's Parent, ByteDance, Made Fake Accounts With Content Scraped From Instagram And Snapchat, Former Employees Say - BuzzFeed News https://apple.news/...
TikTok's Parent, ByteDance, Made Fake Accounts With Content Scraped From Instagram And Snapchat “...former employees described the project as one of several “growth hacks” — including manipulation of like & video view statistics — employed by the company” https://www.buzzfeednews…
It's funny to be pubbing this story right after @TaylorLorenz's monster story about how Meta paid a GOP comms firm to smear TikTok. But in a way, it makes sense: there's a ton of $$ in this market, and both companies seem willing to play dirty to get it. https://www.buzzfeednews.…
The docs supporting this story are wild. One doc lists content scraping as an OKR ('objective and key result') for an engineering team. Another defends the company's use of fake accounts. A third specifically mentions scraping content from IG. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
🚨 SCOOP! 🚨 TikTok's Parent, ByteDance, Made Fake Accounts With Content Scraped From Instagram And Snapchat, Former Employees Say https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... @ebakerwhite @BuzzFeedNews
We sent ByteDance a detailed list of the assertions we would publish in this article, and a detailed set of questions about what their practices were at the time. They sent back two sentences, which did not dispute the scraping that employees described. https://www.buzzfeednews.c…
“the scraped content was used to train ByteDance's powerful “For You” personalization algorithm on US-based content, so that it would better reflect the preferences of US users.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
In 2017, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, scraped videos, usernames and profile pictures, from IG, Snapchat, and other sources and then uploaded them — without users' knowledge or consent — to Flipagram, a shortform video app. by @ebakerwhite https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...