According to the BBC, Chinese tech titans including Alibaba, Tiktok owner ByteDance, and Tencent have finally given Chinese authorities access to their algorithmic inner workings. According to the data, 30 distinct algorithm descriptions have been made public by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). This statement also promised regular updates to the list of algorithms in an effort to reduce data exploitation.
The Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform Taobao is one example, as is the Douyin algorithm developed by ByteDance.
According to Trivium China’s director of tech policy research, Kendra Schaefer, the data seems to be superficial, and it does not appear that the algorithms themselves have been presented. But East China University of Political Science and Law’s Competition Law Research Center Executive Director Zhai Wei disagrees. Information submitted was “far more thorough than what was published for sure,” he told the BBC.
The operation of a function in a programme or website is often determined by an algorithm. Simply put, how well the website/app will function. The corporations claim to have very strict policies regarding the disclosure of these algorithms. Meta and Google’s parent company Alphabet apparently won the argument that their business practises should be kept confidential in the United States, despite widespread requests for more transparency in the industry.
