TikTok, the unsolved node of the algorithm
The contenders will have to agree on ForYou, the world's most popular algorithm that suggests videos in line with user tastes
With Apec in Busan closed, the TikTok case is still unresolved. The billion-dollar sale of TikTok America and its 170 million users by Bytedance is running on separate tracks. It is known that Oracle will readdress the American data with a string of investors, ByteDance will remain a shareholder, but the contenders will have to agree on control of ForYou, the world's most popular algorithm that suggests videos in line with the user's tastes.
The negotiation with China, which gave birth to TikTok thanks to ForYou, has laid bare the issue of the Chinese framing of the algorithm, especially in view of potential new global disputes: Beijing is working on the internationalisation of Kwai/Huaishou, an app whose shareholders also include the China Administration of Cyberspace (CAC), and who knows what else the future holds.
There is no coherent Chinese law or articulate regulation of algorithms. Feverish legal negotiations have been focused on the world's most globalised app for months, but sources overlap with direct or indirect forms of protection, algorithms in fact can be framed as copyright, patents, trade and industry secrets, not to mention the data governance and artificial intelligence side.
A real puzzle, each law covers a piece of the problem, but the various pieces do not make the total. In three years, a package of regulations has been passed that touches on the subject without providing clarity: in 2021 the Regulation on the management of algorithmic recommendation services, in 2022 the Regulation on the management of deep synthesis services, and in 2023 the Interim Measures on the management of generative AI services.
As Mao Zedong would say, great is the confusion under heaven, so the situation is excellent. As an idea, a product of ingenuity, the algorithm is neither copyrightable nor patentable. It is protectable if it is expressed in code (copyright), included in an invention with technical effect (patent), kept secret (trade secret), regulated by contract.
