Douyin, China’s TikTok, bans thousands of accounts in crackdown against porn, prostitution
- This initiative continues the decades-long campaign in China against pornography and other content deemed inappropriate by the country’s censors
- ByteDance-owned Douyin said it has permanently blocked 127,000 accounts this month and helped police track down perpetrators in two cases
In the cases Douyin tracked with the police, the banned accounts had posted advertisements for prostitution and other information considered vulgar, which provided links to various social media accounts including those on WeChat and QQ, the blog post said. Illegal transactions, it added, are then completed on the linked platforms. Tencent Holdings operates WeChat and QQ.
“Douyin doesn’t have access to such data on those platforms,” the blog post said. “We hope internet companies, including Tencent, would collaborate with us to fight this black industry chain through sharing of data, so we can protect the interest of all users.”
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How China censors the internet
A representative of ByteDance had no further information on Douyin’s blog post after providing a copy to the South China Morning Post. Tencent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Douyin’s latest campaign continues the decades-long crackdown in China against pornography and other content deemed inappropriate by the country’s censors. In recent years, regulators have stepped up their oversight of online content in the world’s largest internet market.