Chinese internet giants like Alibaba, Tiktok-owner ByteDance and Tencent have shared details of their algorithms with China’s regulators for the first time.
Algorithms decide what users see and in what order they see it — and are critical to the growth of social media platforms.
They are closely guarded by companies.
In the US, Meta and Alphabet have successfully argued that they are trade secrets amid calls for more disclosure.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has published a list with descriptions of 30 algorithms.
In a statement, it said its list of algorithms is routinely updated to curb data abuse.
Among the algorithms listed is one from the e-commerce website Taobao, owned by Alibaba.
The Mandarin document said Taobao’s algorithm “recommends products or services to users based on their digital footprint and historical search data.”
ByteDance’s algorithm for Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, is designed to gauge user interests by what they click, comment, “like” or “dislike.”
Kendra Schaefer, head of technology policy research at Trivium China, said the data appeared “perfunctory”.
“It doesn’t look like the algorithms themselves were submitted,” she told the BBC.
“Each of these algorithms has been given a registration number, allowing the CAC to focus enforcement efforts on a specific algorithm. The question is what is the next step to see if an algorithm matches the code?”
However, Zhai Wei, a senior director of the Competition Law Research Center at East China University of Political Science and Law, believes the information provided was “much more detailed than what was released with certainty.”
“It involves some trade secrets that cannot be disclosed to the public,” he told Bloomberg.
ByteDance declined to comment when approached by the BBC on Tuesday.
Alibaba and publicly traded tech companies Tencent, NetEase and Baidu did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.
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Chinese regulators have had a tighter grip on the tech sector for almost two years now.
The country passed new rules on algorithms in March, allowing users to opt out of contributing to recommendations.
It also required algorithms with “public opinion characteristics or social mobilization skills” to register with the CAC.
Ms Schaefer said it was “remarkable” that the registrations were made public.
“I’m not aware of any other country in the world where you can see a list of all the pieces of code that essentially make your decisions, your purchasing decisions, your content viewing decisions,” she said.
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