Why Yahoo! And “Fortnight” leaves China

On the same day, Tuesday, November 2, Yahoo! And the publisher of the successful video game Fortnight Announced the disconnection of their services in China. In a statement, the former U.S. webmaster explained that its services were no longer accessible there, motivated by “an increasingly difficult business and legal environment in China.” The news is almost identical to that of the professional network LinkedIn, which announced on Thursday, October 14, that he was leaving China for similar reasons.

Tencent, the Chinese digital company that operates Fortnite in China, offered no explanation for its decision. These departures will take effect on the 1st^{There is} November, a new, especially stringent Personal Data Protection Act. Yahoo’s release! The code is above all: the service is not widely used in China and in 2013 most of its services (emails, information, music, etc.) were already closed, and two years later its research and development offices.

All that remained were its financial and sports information sites and a few media outlets such as TechCrunch. Large foreign websites such as Google, Facebook, YouTube and many other media outlets have been blocked by the “big digital wall” in China. This is the case with those who only occupy key locations or agree to comply with local rules: this is the case with Bing, Microsoft, which provides audited search results, and Apple, which censors its App Store, and LinkedIn, which blocks certain profiles until they leave.

Extensive regulatory campaign

Yahoo! In 2004, he was severely criticized in the United States for providing information to dissidents to Chinese authorities, including a journalist who had been sentenced to ten years in prison. The company was asked by the US Congress, an example of how Internet companies find it difficult to satisfy both Chinese officials and their compatriots.

The adoption of the Data Protection Act in August is part of a broader campaign to regulate Chinese digital companies. Launched in late 2020 with the cancellation of the IPO of Alibaba’s financial subsidiary Ant Group, it has been expanded and deepened to include regulators in a number of sectors, from finance to competition, including data security. Since then, e-commerce leader Alibaba and food distribution champion Mituwan have been fined billions of yuan for abusing their dominance.

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