![]() These findings suggest a significant gap between data protection requirements on paper and protection in practice (Feng, 2019). In 2017, only 69.6 percent of the 500 most popular Chinese websites had disclosed their privacy policies (Feng, 2019). These four principles are to enhance self-regulation of the internet industry by providing consumers notice, control, security measures, and ability to view and contest the accuracy and completeness of data collected about them (Federal Trade Commission, 1998). ![]() Lastly, this sample also demonstrates the varying degree of commercial success as they all offer services globally, with Baidu browser the least commercially successful, and TikTok the most successful.Īn earlier study shows that Chinese web services had a bad track record in privacy protection: back in 2006, before China had in place a national regime of online privacy protection, among 82 commercial websites in China, few websites posted a privacy disclosure and an even fewer number of websites followed the four fair information principles of notice, choice, access and security (Kong, 2007). They also represent a mix of more established (Baidu, Tencent) and up-and-coming (ByteDance) Chinese internet companies. Together, these four mobile applications represent a global reach of flagship China-based mobile apps and a wide range of functions: search and information, news content, short videos and social. To examine how globalising Chinese mobile apps respond to the varying data and privacy governance standards when operating overseas, we compare the Chinese and overseas version of four sets of China-based mobile applications: (1) Baidu mobile browser - a mobile browser with a built-in search engine owned and developed by Chinese internet company Baidu, (2) Toutiao and TopBuzz - mobile news aggregators developed and owned by ByteDance, (3) Douyin and TikTok - mobile short video-sharing platforms developed and owned by ByteDance, with the former only available in Chinese app stores and the later exclusively in international app stores, and (4) WeChat and Weixin - a social application developed and owned by Chinese internet company Tencent. China-based mobile applications therefore need to comply with domestic statutory mechanisms as well as privacy protection regimes and standards in the jurisdictions as they expand outward, such as the extraterritorial application of Article 3 of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Such global reach and commercial success makes Chinese mobile applications pertinent sites of private governance on the global scale (see Cartwright, 2020, this issue). Owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance, TikTok is popular worldwide, predominantly among young mobile phone users, while most commercially successful Chinese internet companies are still based in the Chinese market. This settlement implies several significant developments. TikTok agreed to pay the fine (Federal Trade Commission, 2019). ![]() ![]() In February 2019, the short video sharing and social mobile application TikTok was fined a record-setting penalty (US$ 5.7 million) for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by the US Federal Trade Commission for failing to obtain parental consent and deliver parental notification. This paper is part of Geopolitics, jurisdiction and surveillance, a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by Monique Mann and Angela Daly. Moreover, this paper highlights the role of platform owners (e.g., Google and Apple) in gatekeeping mobile app privacy standards and the role of the state in imposing a data protection framework on overseas versions of China-based mobile apps. Baidu has the most unsatisfactory data and privacy protection measures, while ByteDance’s TikTok/Douyin and TopBuzz/Toutiao offer more comprehensive user protection from different jurisdictions. Our analysis showed variations across apps and within the Chinese and international-facing versions in their data and privacy governance in app design and policies. Lastly, we conducted content analysis of the terms of service and privacy policies to establish the app’s data collection, storage, transfer, use, and disclosure measures. To study the app’s interface design, we employ the walkthrough method to examine privacy features during the account registration and deletion stages in app usage. We first present an overview of the ownership, functions, business models and strategies of the reviewed apps. Together, these four applications represent popular Chinese apps branching into diverse overseas markets such as Europe, Brazil, North America, and Southeast Asia. We examine and compare data and privacy governance by four China-based mobile applications and their international versions: Baidu, Toutiao and its international version TopBuzz, Douyin and its international version TikTok, and WeChat.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |