Is anti-rumour crackdown silencing voices of online dissent at Weibo?

Big-hitting Weibo users are scaling back their activity on the microblog and deleting previous posts as Beijing's drive to keep online rumours in check takes effect.

Data provided to the South China Morning Post by Weiboreach, a firm based in Harbin providing social-media-data analysis, shows the number of posts by influential microbloggers was, on average, 11.2 per cent lower per day last month than it was in days earlier in the year.

The drop in the number of posts came amid a nationwide campaign against "rumour- mongers". In the past month, hundreds of people have been detained across the mainland on charges of "inciting trouble" and libel for posting unverified or critical information on their Sina Weibo microblogs.

Weibo has emerged as one of the nation's most important platforms for online debate and claimed more than 500 million users at the end of last year.

Weiboreach examined a random sample of 4,500 microblogs each followed by more than 50,000 people. Among these, the aggregate number of posts fell from roughly 10,500 on January 1 to 7,300 on August 31.