TikTok owner ByteDance filed a lawsuit against Tencent on February 3, alleging that the Shenzhen-based rival was violating rules under China's proposed anti-monopoly law by blocking content from Douyin, the local version of TikTok, which is based in the Chinese capital Beijing.
The allegations of the ByteDance were accepted by the Beijing Court this Monday (08/02) and now the charges against the Tencent will be brought to trial in the country. “We filed this lawsuit to protect our rights and those of our users,” a company representative told the local newspaper South China Morning Post. “We believe that competition is better for consumers and promotes innovation,” he added.
The allegations
A ByteDance seeks payment of 90 million yuan (R$75,3 million) from Tencent, which allegedly blocked Douyin from its main applications, preventing users from watching or sharing content from the short video platform. In the lawsuit, now accepted by the courts, the claim is that Tencent's attitude “constitutes “monopolistic behavior, achieved by the abuse of market dominance to exclude and limit competition”.
Tencent, in turn, counterattacked ByteDance's allegations, stating that Douyin, an app used by 600 million users daily in China, is the one breaking the country's laws by "using illegal and anti-competitive methods to access WeChat user data."
The dispute between Tencent and ByteDance is old. In January 2019, that is, two years ago, ByteDance tried to “invade” the territory dominated by WeChat when launching Duoshan, but it didn't catch on. Tencent also tried, unsuccessfully, to gain ground on TikTok with some short video apps. These chapters, however, never made it to court, like the current one.
The Chinese government has yet to take a position, but in November of last year it gave an indication of how it will deal with accusations of monopoly by opening an investigation into the e-commerce site Alibaba. This month, it fined the fashion e-commerce site Vipshop 3 million yuan (R$2,5 million) for anti-competitive behavior. It remains to be seen how it will position itself in the dispute between ByteDance and Tencent.
Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. TechCrunch
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