China’s Internet Information Service Algorithmic Recommendation Management Provisions took effect on 1 March 2022. They were jointly promulgated on 31 December 2021 by four bodies: the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the State Administration for Market Regulation. The rules cover services that use algorithms for generation, synthesis, personalized pushing, ranking, search filtering, and scheduling.
The provisions give users notable rights over recommendation systems. Service providers must offer a convenient option to switch off algorithmic recommendation and must stop the service when a user requests it (Article 17). Providers may not use algorithms to impose unreasonably differentiated trading prices based on consumer characteristics such as their trading habits (Article 21), a direct attempt to curb the practice often called price discrimination. The rules add protections for specific groups: services suited to the elderly with safeguards against fraud (Article 19), transparent algorithmic allocation and pay for platform workers (Article 20), and bars on content that could lead minors to online addiction or imitate unsafe conduct (Article 18). Providers with public-opinion or social-mobilization capacity must file their algorithms, including a self-assessment report, with a national registration system.
These provisions were an early and unusually detailed national attempt to regulate the recommendation engines that shape social media, e-commerce, and gig-work platforms. For businesses, they signaled that China would treat algorithms themselves, not just data, as objects of direct regulation and registration, a model distinct from Western approaches.