
Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China, says it punished nearly a million content creators and blacklisted 11,000 online merchants in 2021
- Firm says it intercepted 91 million product releases and paid more than 180 million yuan (US$28.2 million) towards after-sales disputes and consumer rights claims
- Douyin says its gross merchandise from January to August increased by 7.9 times compared with the same period last year
At the same time, Douyin is trying to convince consumers that there are quality controls in place and that there is back-office management of the products sold by influencers on its platform.
It said it had intercepted 91 million product releases in 2021 and paid more than 180 million yuan (US$28.2 million) towards after-sales disputes and consumer rights claims, according to a year-end review report released by the company on Thursday.
Douyin, which had more than 600 million daily active users in China, has never officially published the scale of its online business. Earlier this year, it said its gross merchandise from January to August increased by 7.9 times compared with the same period last year.
TikTok’s sister app hijacks users’ screen with mandatory pauses
As Beijing tightens regulatory controls over the internet and as the Chinese market matures, technology companies are increasingly emphasising their efforts in platform governance, as well as social responsibility and “common prosperity”, a goal that president Xi Jinping coined this year.
To prevent the sale of fake goods, Douyin has developed a system where it analyses semantics, relationship networks and the same kinds of products. It can automatically detect fake products with a more than 80 per cent success rate, the Beijing-based company said.
China’s TikTok tests paid short dramas for 15 US cents each
ByteDance is now duplicating its success in overseas markets through TikTok, as the TikTok economy becomes too big to ignore in the United States. TikTok officially started online retail in Indonesia and the UK earlier this year. At stake is the US$4.2 trillion global e-commerce industry, according to a 2021 forecast from the Adobe Digital Economy Index.
