Chinese digital giants including Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance have handed over details of their algorithms to authorities, an unprecedented step in the context of Beijing’s takeover of the sector, the regulator said.
At the heart of the digital economy, algorithms serve as the brains of many applications and services on the Internet and are often a well-kept secret of the digital giants.
These tools allow us to analyze the amount of information collected about a user and make automatic recommendations based on their habits or preferences.
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Concerned about the opacity of the digital giants in the face of these practices, the authorities seek to further regulate the algorithms.
Under a regulation from March, companies must verify with the regulator the compliance of their algorithms and provide technical details.
On Friday, August 12, the Cyberspace Administration of China first published a list outlining how tech giants use algorithms.
E-commerce champion Alibaba, for example, recommends new products based on its users’ browsing and search history.
Short video app Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) makes suggestions based on the time spent by its users on previous content.
Without modification of the algorithms.
“At this stage, the authorities have not explicitly asked companies to modify their algorithms,” Angela Zhang, a specialist in Chinese law at the University of Hong Kong, told AFP.
“Regulators are more at the information gathering stage,” says Angela Zhang.
Chinese authorities have been particularly uncompromising against the technology sector for almost two years, for practices hitherto tolerated and widespread.
Thus, several giants of the sector have been pointed out with regard, in particular, to personal data, competition and user rights.
Last month, Didi, the Chinese leader in chauffeur-driven bookings (VTC), was fined around €1.2 billion for personal data breaches.
Source: BFM TV
