Executive fired from TikTok's Chinese owner says Beijing had access to app data in termination suit

A former executive at TikTok’s parent company ByteDance accuses the tech giant of serving as a “propaganda tool” for the Chinese government. The allegations were made in a complaint filed Friday in San Francisco Superior Court as part of his wrongful termination lawsuit. Yintao Yu claims that the Chinese government monitored ByteDance's work from within its Beijing headquarters. He also alleges ByteDance used software to scrape user content from competitors like Instagram and Snapchat without permission. ByteDance did not reply to a request for comment.