Social Media companies in China in court
A “war” has broken out between Douyin, the Chinese version of the TikTok app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, and Tencent (TCEHY), a Shenzhen-based social media company. These are “leaders” in Chinese social media, since the WeChat app Tencent’s app has more than 1.2 billion monthly active users and the QQ app has 700 million monthly active users. As Douyin, it does not publish monthly figures, but said last month that it has an average of 600 million active users every day.
The former has sued the latter on the grounds that it is exploiting its substantial market share to further outstrip its competitors.
As is well known, China has very much developed its antitrust policy. The Chinese regulators have issued new guidelines which aimed at preventing monopolies on the Internet. According to what Douyin published on its official WeChat account, Tencent’s WeChat and QQ messaging apps prohibit their users from sharing content from Douyin for three years, which is the reason that led the Chinese company to file a lawsuit.
Chinese state media outlets such as Beijing Daily, highlight that Douyin is asking Tencent to lift its content restrictions and pay as compensation for the financial damage caused by the restrictions in the amount of 90 million yuan, i.e. 14 million dollars.
Douyin argues that healthy competition should exist between companies and the preservation of its own and its users’ rights to bolster its charges while Tencent threatens to retaliate with lawsuits for illegally harvesting WeChat users’ information.
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Author: PC-GR
The World of Technology
