China has retaliated against what it sees as probable algorithmic misuse by its internet behemoths, announcing that government officials will undertake in-person inspections.
China’s state-controlled internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, said in a statement Friday that it will target “large-scale websites, platforms, and products with significant influence,” but did not name any specific companies.
Bloomberg broke the story to us first.
According to a Google Translate version of the regulator’s announcement, the agency wants Chinese IT businesses to submit their algorithms for evaluation in order to prevent “abuse” and “bad information.” Officials may impose unspecified fines if they determine that a company’s algorithms are defective or illegal.
Most tech firms that offer up content recommendations — be it Google’s search engine, the News Feed on Facebook, or TikTok’s For You Page — rely on algorithms to surface results.
This latest move by China’s regulator aims to bring the country’s largest digital companies into compliance with the country’s algorithmic management guidelines, which were implemented earlier this year. According to Stanford’s DigiChina project, they ban algorithmically generated fake news and the use of algorithms to establish a monopoly. According to Bloomberg, they are also designed to prevent online addiction, social dysfunction, or harm China’s national security.
China’s latest attempt to reign in the expanding power of its major digital businesses, including online retailer JD.com, TikTok parent company ByteDance, and payment and commerce colossus Alibaba, is intervening in algorithms. These companies’ founders have become billionaires as a result of the great popularity of their applications and websites, as well as China’s rising connectedness.
However, China is keen to keep control of its internet, focusing on how these companies collect data, where and how they can list, and, ostensibly, applying pressure on their ultrawealthy founder-CEOs. JD.com founder Richard Liu, ByteDance cofounder Zhang Yiming, and Su Hua, founder of TikTok’s main rival Kuaishou, have all stepped down from leadership roles at their respective companies in the last two years.
Bloomberg also claimed that the internet regulator had examined representatives from key companies such as JD.com, Tencent, Alibaba, and others about recent significant employment layoffs.
China isn’t the only country concerned about tech company algorithms, which have become a flashpoint for lawmakers concerned about everything from online child sexual abuse to social media free speech.
The UK introduced its Online Harms Bill earlier this month, a broad piece of new legislation aimed at how algorithms distribute unlawful or dangerous content. The word algorithm appears at least 11 times in the proposed legislation.
In February, US senators introduced the Social Media NUDGE Act, a bipartisan plan that would oblige firms to cut down the spread of misinformation through algorithms.
