China Tells Tech Giants to Stop Blocking Rivals' Links

AltMachine writes: China fired a fresh regulatory shot at its tech giants on Monday, telling them to end a long-standing practice of blocking each other's links on their sites or face consequences. The comments, made by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) at a news briefing, mark the latest step in Beijing's broad regulatory crackdown of monopolistic or abusive practices that has ensnared sectors from technology to education and property and wiped billions of dollars off the market value of some of the country's largest companies. The practice targeted by the MIIT is common. Tencent restricts users from sharing content from ByteDance-owned short video app Douyin on Tencent's instant messaging apps WeChat and QQ. In February, Douyin filed a complaint with a Beijing court saying it constituted monopolistic behavior. Tencent has called those accusations baseless. In other cases, Alibaba's Taobao and Tmall e-commerce marketplaces do not allow Tencent's payment service WeChat Pay to be used as a payment option. Tencent said it supported the MIIT's guidance and would make the necessary changes in phases. Alibaba said it would comply with the MIIT requirements and "looked forward to finding common ground with other platforms."