Toutiao has opportunity to improve

TOUTIAO, a popular news service smartphone application, has been criticized for pushing vulgar and other improper information to users. On April 9, at the order of the State Administration of Radio and Television, it closed an improper sub-app and WeChat public account. Later, it withdrew its app from the Apple Store and other smartphone app stores for three weeks to make changes. On Wednesday, Zhang Yiming, its CEO, issued a public apology letter. Thepaper.cn comments:

Toutiao must be one of the most popular smartphone apps, but it is not a news agency. It works by obtaining news releases and updates from other websites and pushing pieces it has selected to users.

As early as 2016, statistics show Toutiao had about 600 million users, of which 140 million were active users. According to a report by Questmobile, an internet data company, every active user of Toutiao spent an average 73.45 minutes on it every day last year.

Toutiao used to let algorithms decide which news to push to which users based on their “preferences”.

In January, the internet regulation authorities talked with the company’s top executives, and afterwards the company recruited 2,000 editors to examine content.

But the measure proved ineffective and complaints about Toutiao pushing vulgar and improper news continued. Considering the large number of users Toutiao has, the damage will be huge if the company does not correct its ways.

Six days have passed since Toutiao withdrew its app from online stores, and there are still two weeks to go. This is a precious opportunity for Toutiao to improve itself.