For the first time on Friday, China's Cyberspace Administration released a list describing how tech giants use algorithms.
The e-commerce champion Alibaba, for example, recommends new products based on the browsing and search history of its users.
Owned by ByteDance, the short video application Douyin (Chinese version of TikTok) makes suggestions based on the time spent by its users on previous content.
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Since March, companies have been required to check with the regulator on the compliance of their algorithms and provide technical details.
At the heart of the digital economy, algorithms serve as the brains of many applications and services on the Internet and are generally a well-kept secret.
Tencent, the "Chinese Facebook" is also affected by this takeover of the sector by Beijing.
Worried about the opacity of the digital giants vis-à-vis these practices, the authorities are seeking to further regulate the algorithms.
“At this stage, the authorities have not explicitly asked the companies to modify their algorithms,” Angela Zhang, a specialist in Chinese law at the University of Hong Kong, told AFP.
“The regulators are more at the stage of collecting information,” notes the lawyer.
The Chinese authorities have been particularly intransigent against the tech sector for almost two years, for practices hitherto tolerated and widespread.
VTC leader fined
Several behemoths in the sector have thus been singled out in particular in terms of personal data, competition and user rights.
Last month, Didi, China's leader in chauffeur-driven reservations (VTC), was fined some 1.2 billion euros for personal data breaches.
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Last week, the DXY portal, a popular medical information site in China, was banned from publication after questioning the effectiveness of a treatment against Covid-19 based on traditional Chinese medicine, promoted by the authorities.
The American Yahoo, which had been one of the most popular search engines in the early days of the Internet, left China last November, when the country tightens the screws on the digital sector.
Microsoft's professional social network LinkedIn announced a similar decision in October.