Weibo, Tencent volunteer to clean up content as China intensifies crackdown
Chinese social media platform operators Weibo and Tencent have voluntarily embarked on clean-up campaigns to sanitise content despite not being singled out by regulators
China’s social media platform operators are now volunteering to sanitise their content before the country’s regulator turns its gaze onto them.
Weibo, China's Twitter-like service, will clean up lowbrow content on its live-streaming platforms to “ensure they do not disrupt China’s socialist core values” in a campaign that will last three months, the company said in a statement on its official account.
Tencent, the biggest internet company in Asia, has blocked videos from Weishi, Kuaishou, Douyin and Xigua – platforms singled out by regulators for distributing inappropriate content – from playing on its own WeChat and QQ platforms, according to a spokesperson.
Weibo, WeChat and QQ collectively reach more than 2 billion monthly active users, with many consumers logging on to more than one platform.
Chinese social media are reacting to tightened controls by the Chinese media regulator on online content. On Tuesday, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT) demanded Toutiao, China’s most widely used news site with than 120 million daily active users, to permanently shut down one of its most popular accounts Neihan Duanzi.
The account, with more than 4.1 million followers on Toutiao, regularly posted stories, photos and short videos deemed “vulgar” by the media regulator. An example of a video, re-posted on YouTube, showed someone pinching a fly off a table and dropping it into another person’s bowl of noodles.