TikTok-parent ByteDance made fake accounts with content scraped from Instagram, Snapchat and other such platforms and used them on Flipagram, a TikTok predecessor, in 2017, BuzzFeed News reported citing four former employees of the company. The scraping was seen as a "growth hack" for the company. ByteDance's goal was to scrape more than 10,000 videos a day, a source said.