ByteDance scraped hundreds of thousands of user profiles, videos, and content from Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms without consent in 2017, uploading them to fake accounts on Flipagram to boost user engagement and train TikTok's recommendation algorithm.
In 2017, ByteDance acquired Flipagram and began systematically scraping content from Instagram, Snapchat, and Musical.ly without user knowledge or consent. According to four former ByteDance employees and internal documents, the company created fake accounts and uploaded scraped videos, usernames, profile pictures, and descriptions to Flipagram as a 'growth hack.' The operation was run by an engineering team in China with goals to scrape over 10,000 videos daily from high-priority countries. The scraped content affected hundreds of thousands of accounts and was used to train ByteDance's 'For You' personalization algorithm on US-based content, which now powers both TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin. Users discovered their content had been copied without permission and contacted the company to complain. ByteDance employees were instructed to either delete the fake accounts or transfer control to the complainants, telling them that Flipagram could not prevent users from uploading others' content. The scraping violated Instagram's, Snapchat's, and Musical.ly's terms of service. ByteDance also manipulated like and view counts to make creators believe they were more popular than they actually were. Flipagram was eventually shut down in 2018 when ByteDance focused on TikTok instead.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that memorize and leak sensitive personal data or infer private information about individuals without their consent. Unexpected or unauthorized sharing of data and information can compromise user expectation of privacy, assist identity theft, or cause loss of confidential intellectual property.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed