#TENCENT 900B WECHAT 259BSTREETJOURNAL REGISTRATION#

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.

#TENCENT 900B WECHAT 259BSTREETJOURNAL REGISTRATION#

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.

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