“Tencent and its products abide by the philosophy of fair competition and open cooperation in providing services to users and third parties,” it said. Tencent denied it had engaged in anti-competitive behavior in a statement Tuesday night. It is not the first time Douyin has taken Tencent to court, but the escalation among the major players comes amid changing political winds for China’s internet firms, as regulators bring the fight against perceived unfair competition to a sector which long benefited from a hands-off approach.ĭouyin said for WeChat and QQ’s hundreds of millions of combined users, there was little in the way of an alternative on the market and no effective constraint on Tencent’s power. The dispute came to a head on Tuesday when Douyin filed suit against Tencent in Beijing’s Intellectual Property Court, claiming Tencent was abusing its market dominance and contravening Article 17 of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law. Today, users have to jump through hoops in order to share Douyin videos, downloading the video locally before uploading it to their desired Tencent platform. Tencent acknowledged the issue but denied it was intentional.Ī month later, WeChat and QQ began rejecting links to short video content from ByteDance services Douyin, Xigua Video and news app Jinri Toutiao. The war of words and legal wrangling between Tencent and Douyin dates to at least March 2018, when users of Tencent’s WeChat and its QQ social networking offshoot QZone reported issues posting links to videos on rival platform Douyin.Īfter a minute or so, such links would only be visible to them, and not to other users, they said.
Meanwhile, ByteDance last month launched its own digital payment platform, an e-wallet called Douyin Pay, putting it in direct competition with WeChat Pay and Alibaba’s similar service, Alipay.
The WeChat Channels feature garnered more than 200 million daily active users in fewer than six months since launching, and the app’s founder Allen Zhang said in January that videos will be the king of social media for the next decade. WeChat, for its part, launched a direct assault on Douyin’s turf by introducing a short-video feed within its super-app. ByteDance previously sued Tencent for blocking its content, but TikTok’s owner said this is the first time the company is doing so on anti-monopoly grounds.Ĭover Story: Why China Faces Handicaps in Antitrust War With Tech TitansīyteDance has been eating away at Tencent’s lead in areas like social media and gaming in recent years. WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users, has erected a so-called walled garden that controls the content and services its users can interact with. Tencent responded by saying that ByteDance’s accusation was “malicious framing” and pledged to countersue. “We have filed this lawsuit to protect our rights and those of our users.” “We believe that competition is better for consumers and promotes innovation,” a ByteDance spokesperson said. As recently as January, ByteDance senior executives publicly accused the larger company of blocking its offerings, including Douyin and work collaboration and productivity app Feishu, on WeChat. The two tech giants are fierce rivals, and their billionaire founders - Zhang Yiming at ByteDance and Tencent’s Pony Ma - have previously traded barbs. The latest stand-off comes after Beijing extended its landmark anti-monopoly campaign into cyberspace late last year, unveiling draft regulations targeting internet companies and sparking a sell-off in the tech sector. The company asked the court to order that Tencent cease the actions and pay a modest 90 million yuan ($14 million) in compensation. for alleged monopolistic behavior by Tencent’s WeChat and QQ platforms, escalating a running feud dating back at least three years between the giants of Chinese social media.īyteDance filed suit Tuesday in Beijing alleging that Tencent violated Chinese antitrust laws by blocking access on WeChat and QQ to content from Douyin.
ByteDance Ltd., owner of global video sensation TikTok and its Chinese twin, Douyin, has once again sued Tencent Holdings Ltd.
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