Toutiao, a High-Flying Chinese App, Delivers News to Millions. China’s Censors Have Noticed.
- 6 years ago
Toutiao, a High-Flying Chinese App, Delivers News to Millions. China’s Censors Have Noticed.
Every day, its smartphone app feeds 120 million people personalized streams of buzzy news stories, videos of dogs frolicking in snow, GIFs of traffic mishaps
and listicles such as “The World’s Ugliest Celebrities.”
Now the company is discovering the risks involved, under China’s censorship regime, in giving the people exactly what they want.
Another suspended account had recently put up a post titled “The World’s Ugliest Celebrities,
Michael Jackson Is Ranked First, You Won’t Want to Eat After Reading This.”
“Once you have more people watching, then you want to be more cautious,” Wei-Ying Ma, who
heads Toutiao’s artificial intelligence lab, told a conference in Beijing last month.
Last week, the Beijing bureau of China’s top internet regulator accused Toutiao of “spreading pornographic and vulgar information” and “causing a negative impact on public opinion online,” and ordered
that updates to several popular sections of the app be halted for 24 hours.
The company, which is currently valued at $20 billion, has been in talks with existing backers to raise new financing
that would value the company at more than $30 billion, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details are not public.
In response, the app’s parent company, Beijing Bytedance Technology, took down or temporarily suspended the accounts of more than 1,100 bloggers
that it said had been publishing “low-quality content” on the app.
Every day, its smartphone app feeds 120 million people personalized streams of buzzy news stories, videos of dogs frolicking in snow, GIFs of traffic mishaps
and listicles such as “The World’s Ugliest Celebrities.”
Now the company is discovering the risks involved, under China’s censorship regime, in giving the people exactly what they want.
Another suspended account had recently put up a post titled “The World’s Ugliest Celebrities,
Michael Jackson Is Ranked First, You Won’t Want to Eat After Reading This.”
“Once you have more people watching, then you want to be more cautious,” Wei-Ying Ma, who
heads Toutiao’s artificial intelligence lab, told a conference in Beijing last month.
Last week, the Beijing bureau of China’s top internet regulator accused Toutiao of “spreading pornographic and vulgar information” and “causing a negative impact on public opinion online,” and ordered
that updates to several popular sections of the app be halted for 24 hours.
The company, which is currently valued at $20 billion, has been in talks with existing backers to raise new financing
that would value the company at more than $30 billion, according to a person familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details are not public.
In response, the app’s parent company, Beijing Bytedance Technology, took down or temporarily suspended the accounts of more than 1,100 bloggers
that it said had been publishing “low-quality content” on the app.