Chinese regulators might follow the European Union’s lead to make life harder for internet companies such as TikTok that closely track behavior of their users in a move that could significantly hurt their revenue.
Last week, Beijing proposed a new set of measures to enforce data security for individuals and the nation overall. According to Article 23 of the draft (see translation from China Law Translate), companies that are “using user data and algorithms to deliver news information or commercial advertisements shall conspicuously label them with the words ‘targeted’ and provide users with functionality to stop receiving information from targeted delivery.”
This is good news for users in China, who could potentially take more control over what they are shown and what tech companies collect about them.
On the flip side of the coin, stepped up data protection will “definitely have an impact” on companies that rely heavily on data crunching business, Michael Tan, partner at law firm Taylor Wessing specializing in data policies, told TechCrunch.
Advances in artificial intelligence have helped adtech players get better at predicting people’s clicks, and, boost their income. Few have done it better in the Chinese mobile age than Bytedance, the startup that operates TikTok and the popular Chinese news app Jinri Toutiao. In between viral videos and news are customized ads that help the eight-year-old company, which was last valued at a whopping $75 billion, make money.
Bytedance’s success with programmatic ads prompted more entre ..
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