TikTok Accuses Facebook of 'Plagiarism and Smears'

hackingbear writes: TikTok owner ByteDance has accused Facebook of plagiarism and smears although it did not elaborate on the accusation. "ByteDance has always been committed to becoming a global company. During this process, we have faced all kinds of complex and unimaginable difficulties, including the tense international political environment, collision and conflict of different cultures and plagiarism and smears from competitor Facebook," it said in a statement late on Sunday posted on its official account on Jinri Toutiao, a news aggregator app it owns. TikTok has attracted criticism from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who last year accused the app of censoring political protest, after Facebook couldn't get its way in China by pretending to be nice to China. TikTok has denied the claim. Facebook has been copying various Chinese apps and features including TikTok and WeChat, the all-in-one messaging apps in China.

The enemy of your enemy...

[damn_registrars]

If Facebook really is smearing TikTok - and they have plenty to gain by doing it - this sounds like a case of one company helping another just so they can defeat a common foe. TikTok is a threat to both Facebook and Twitter for social networking - especially for the eyes of the youngest of millenials - so Facebook has a lot to gain by attacking TikTok, even if the attacks drive users to Twitter. Obviously don't pretend that Facebook or Twitter give a shit about user's privacy, that is their main product in both cases after all.

Could have been worse, they might have said that

[Babel-17]

Facebook was a running dog lackey of the capitalists, and other counter-revolutionaries, but that might have tipped their hand.

Great

[bmimatt]

Hopefully they end up litigating each other out of existence. It would make the world a better place.

Re:

[Tablizer]

Indeed! Get to popcorn out. Chinese gov't censorship accusations and copyright infringement claims, this is gonna be good biz drama and I don't care if they both lose. It's not like the Oracle Java API lawsuit, which affects the entire industry.

Re:

[Tablizer]

Correction: "Get the popcorn out." Modnays.

TikTok definately censors

[steveinaccounting]

Anyone who thinks tik tok does not censor things should start a discussion about tiananmen square and the concentration camps in China on TikTok.

Funny...

[SuperDre]

who last year accused the app of censoring political protest

Funny.. isn't that exactly what facebook also does? If they don't agree with the political message you write on facebook it also get's deleted, how is that not censoring..... Yeah, YOU might not agree with the political message, but that doesn't mean it should be deleted, that's why we should have real free speech (but ofcourse we don't have real free speech)..

facebook is not a good company

[cyronix99]

I don't like facebook, script kiddy php site became with marketing tricks ... and now acquisitioning companies that actually have quality products and good engineers ... facebook just doesn't belong at the same level as Google/Microsoft etc. ...