Chinese tech firm ByteDance censored anti-Beijing content in Indonesia, sources claim
- Moderators were allegedly instructed by ByteDance’s Beijing headquarters to delete articles seen as ‘negative’ on its BaBe new aggregator app
- Articles with the keyword ‘Tiananmen’ were removed, as well as content discussing tensions in the South China Sea, sources said
The sources said that local moderators were instructed by a team from ByteDance’s Beijing headquarters to delete articles seen as “negative” about Chinese authorities on the Baca Berita (BaBe) app.
In a statement, BaBe said it disagreed with the claims and that it moderates content according to its community guidelines and in line with Indonesia’s local laws. Those guidelines, which are published on its website, do not mention China or the Chinese government.
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BaBe said that before the “more localised approach” it currently uses, Babe had some moderation practices in place that were not consistent with their philosophy of the Indonesian team deciding what was appropriate for its market.
“These guidelines were replaced in 2019 and we’ve since built and empowered local moderation teams to make decisions that suit the local market,” the statement added.
ByteDance in Beijing said it had no additional comment beyond the BaBe statement. China’s foreign ministry and its internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Some US lawmakers, including Republican Senator Josh Hawley, have raised concerns over TikTok’s data security practices and allegations it engages in censorship at the behest of the Chinese government.
“If ByteDance will censor BaBe in Indonesia, what’s to stop it from censoring TikTok in the United States?” Hawley said. “We shouldn’t trust any assurances they make. This is another reason TikTok as it currently exists should be banned in the United States.”
A senior Trump administration official also weighed in on the news.
“Entities such as ByteDance ultimately answer to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and have a history of censoring free speech to conform to CCP [Chinese Communist Party] propaganda,” the person said.
Indonesia is one of ByteDance’s fastest-growing markets. TikTok had more than 147 million downloads in the country, according to data from app analytics firm SensorTower.
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ByteDance bought Indonesian news aggregator BaBe in 2018 after TikTok was briefly banned in the country for showing “pornography, inappropriate content and blasphemy”, according to officials.
In seeking to reverse the ban, ByteDance agreed with Indonesian authorities to hire a team of local TikTok moderators and reinforce its presence in the world’s fourth-largest country, according to the then Indonesian communications minister and three company sources.
It then bought the full operations of BaBe, in which it had already been a majority investor.
Soon after, moderation guidelines for BaBe, which uses artificial intelligence to aggregate stories from hundreds of Indonesian media outlets, were crafted by a team from ByteDance’s Beijing headquarters, two of the six sources said.
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BaBe moderators were also told not publish any articles on the TikTok ban while negotiations with the Indonesian government were under way, the people said.
Under the new BaBe guidelines, articles from partner media outlets that were perceived as critical of the Chinese government would either not be republished on the BaBe app or would be taken down from the app, according to the six sources.
Three of the sources said BaBe was using content guidelines patterned on those used for ByteDance’s Chinese news app, Toutiao, with some tweaks made for Indonesia regarding the topic of elections as well regarding race, ethnicity, and religion in Indonesia. Sensationalist articles on those topics, which are highly sensitive in Indonesia, would be dropped, they said.
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“They wanted a non-political happy tone for the app,” one of the people said.
The guidelines changed in mid-2020, when it became possible to read articles on previously censored topics on the BaBe app, a separate source said, calling it a “learning process for ByteDance”.
ByteDance disagreed with this assessment and said guidelines changed in 2019.
A 2019 internal ByteDance presentation reviewed by Reuters describes BaBe as Indonesia’s top news app with more than 8 million monthly active users and 30 million downloads by the end of 2019.
