Chinese multinational firm, Tencent reportedly has been implicated in a defamation suit by TikTok-owning company ByteDance. Both companies are in hot waters for years, and their founders, Zhang Yiming and Pony Ma, have traded barbs on several occasions.
This time, bicker attracted to the fact that Tencent was blocking Douyin’s (Chinese variant of TikTok) content on WeChat and QQ. This allegedly violates the country’s no-confidence laws. As a result, ByteDance is seeking 14 million in damages from Tencent. In a recent statement, Byte Dance said,
“We believe that competition is better for consumers and promotes innovation. We have filed this lawsuit to protect our rights and the rights of our consumers”
Despite years of animosity between Tencent and ByteDance, neither of them has been taken to court. ByteDance has challenged his opponent from a distrust angle for the first time. Both WeChat and Douyin are the most popular applications in the country with nearly 2 billion active users, so we can only consider what this case will be.
