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TikTok owner ByteDance blasts Facebook for ‘plagiarism and smears’ amid threat of US ban
- In a statement about the difficulties of going global, ByteDance said one of its challenges was ‘the plagiarism and smears of competitor Facebook’
- Facebook is launching a TikTok-like product, Instagram Reels in the US in early August
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China’s ByteDance, the owner of troubled short video sensation TikTok, took aim at Facebook in a statement on Sunday night that accused the social media giant of “plagiarism and smears”.
“In the process [of becoming a global company] we are faced with all kinds of complex and unimaginable difficulties, including the tense international political environment, the collision and conflict of different cultures, and the plagiarism and smears of competitor Facebook,” ByteDance said in a post from its official account on news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has criticised TikTok in the past. His company also plans to debut Instagram Reels, a feature for sharing short-form video content similar to TikTok, in the US in early August, after its previous TikTok clone Lasso failed. Facebook declined to comment.
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ByteDance’s post came after US President Donald Trump said on Friday he would sign an executive order as soon as Saturday to ban TikTok in the United States, after dismissing the idea of a sale to Microsoft.
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President Trump says US might ban TikTok
President Trump says US might ban TikTok
However, the president has since agreed to give Beijing-based ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of the app to Microsoft, according to a Reuters report on Monday citing three people familiar with matter.
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