TikTok owner ByteDance has accused Facebook of ‘plagiarism and smears’ although it did not elaborate on the accusation.
The Chinese firm also said it faced “complex and unimaginable difficulties” as it worked to grow into global company.
The Beijing-based company made the comments in a statement late on Sunday posted on its official account on Jinri Toutiao, a news aggregator app it owns.
“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.
TikTok has attracted criticism from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who last year accused the app of censoring political protest. TikTok has denied the claim.
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The statement did not mention pressures in the United States that ByteDance currently faces to sell off its popular short-video app TikTok.
U.S. President Donald Trump has agreed to give China’s ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of popular short-video app TikTok to Microsoft Corp, people familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
Over the last several months, U.S. officials have repeatedly said TikTok under its current Chinese parent company, Beijing-based software firm ByteDance, poses a national risk because of the personal data it handles.
“They’re true privacy issues for the American people and for a long time, a long time the United States just said ‘well goodness if we’re having fun with it, or if a company can make money off of it, we’re going to permit that to happen,'” Pompeo said.
In response, under a recent proposal, ByteDance is willing to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok to Microsoft in a bid to make a deal with the White House, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Saturday. That offer has gained some support from allies of the president, including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
In a separate interview on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews the national security implications of foreign business deals, is looking at the matter.
