Chinese social media firms and streaming platforms promise to back crackdown on celebrity culture by removing content that fuels fan fights
- A semi-official industry body said major companies had promised to remove content that triggers disputes between rival fan groups
- The businesses also promised to promote ‘socialist core values and traditional culture’ rather than ‘unhealthy trends’
The China Association of Performing Arts, a semi-official industry body, said on Saturday that social media platforms such as Weibo, Douyin and Xiaohongshu, along with video-streaming platforms Bilibili and Tencent Video, had agreed to remove posts and comments that generated animosity between rival fan groups.
The performing arts group said it had met the companies the previous day to discuss industry self-regulations in line with Beijing’s new rules targeting what it deems the “chaos of fan communities”.
“[We will] exercise corporate social responsibility, to properly inspect cultural content, and together suppress unhealthy trends; to be platforms for content that actively promotes socialist core values and traditional Chinese culture,” the pledge said, adding that the outlets would promote “positive energy” online.
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The companies also pledged to ban users who posted content containing celebrities’ personal details such as ID or phone numbers and crack down on baseless celebrity gossip, exaggerations, rumours and “malicious hype”.
They will also ban fans from raising money to boost their idols’ web traffic.
The companies also said they would punish users who “instigate or assemble fans who disrupt normal social order, such as abusing government complaints mechanisms, disrupt the order of public premises and assemble without prior authorisation”.
The pledge aimed to prevent social media platforms from being used by “unlawful and immoral people” and instead ensure they were used to promote “artistic pursuits, positive values and morally sound artists”, it said.
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The Cyberspace Administration of China started the campaign to clamp down on online fan communities since June, eliminating celebrities rankings and banning children from financially supporting their idols.
Other signatories to the pledge included Baidu’s iQiyi video-sharing website, ByteDance’s news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, three of Tencent’s music-streaming platforms and Alibaba’s Youku video hosting service. Alibaba also owns the South China Morning Post.
Around 150,000 posts have already been removed and more than 4,000 fan accounts punished, the state news agency Xinhua reported last month, and social media platforms have been ordered to regulate celebrity management companies more strictly.
