Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance hand over parts of their algorithm to the Chinese government

Why is this information so important to China?

The outlook for technology companies has not been clear in China, due to the strong regulations that it has imposed to curb their growth. Last year, for example, the Personal Information Protection Law and the Data Security Law were introduced, in order to regulate the handling of consumer information.

Also, in March the government enacted a series of regulations with the argument of keeping Internet companies under control, which required them to disclose their algorithmic tools even when it is not public.

The regulations were implemented by different government agencies, such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology or the Ministry of Public Security, which determined that companies must also include a self-assessment on their security, if they collect biometric information and what the processes are. to train the algorithms.

These systems are some of the best secrets kept by technology companies, as they are at the center of political and mental health controversies around the world. In the United States, companies such as Meta or Alphabet have successfully argued before the authorities that these are trade secrets.