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Commuters check their smartphones as they ride a subway in Beijing. The Cyberspace Administration of China’s latest draft proposal directs internet platform operators to ban re-registration of social media accounts that were previously closed for violating laws and regulations. Photo: Agence France-Presse

China updates rules on real-name registration online in crackdown on schemes to revive banned user accounts

  • The Cyberspace Administration of China has proposed updating regulations on how users of domestic online platforms identify themselves
  • This was designed to prevent owners of banned social media accounts from registering under a similar name on another platform
China’s internet watchdog is updating regulations on how users of domestic online platforms identify themselves, making it harder for censored social media accounts to be revived, as Beijing intensifies efforts to clean up the nation’s cyberspace.
The draft of the updated rules was published on Tuesday by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which is soliciting public feedback until November 10.

It was designed to prevent owners of banned social media accounts from registering under a similar name on another platform. While China’s internet is heavily censored, owners of banned accounts have often resorted to registering new accounts, either on the same platform or another, by using names that are identical to the previous moniker they used.

The CAC’s draft proposal directs internet platform operators to prohibit any re-registration of accounts that were previously closed for violating laws and regulations. These firms should also bar the holders of censored accounts from registering on another platform.

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Tightened regulations among key trends shaping China’s internet in 2021

Tightened regulations among key trends shaping China’s internet in 2021

“This rule [update] was mentioned in earlier campaigns,” said Wang Sixin, a law professor at Beijing’s Communication University of China (CUC). “This time it was put forward in the form of a normative document, which means it will become a routine operational requirement for all internet platforms.”

The CAC’s draft proposal also directs online platform operators to display their users’ internet protocol address location at a significant place on their page.

For domestic users, internet service providers must show in which province or city a user is located, according to the draft update. For overseas-based users, the internet platform operators must show the country they are located.

Under the CAC proposal, internet platform operators must also delete users’ personal and account information soon after their accounts are cancelled.

China started implementing a strict real-name registration system in 2017. This requires users of Chinese microblogging service Weibo and multipurpose social media platform WeChat, marketed as Weixin on the mainland, to authenticate their accounts with their national ID, mobile phone number and other relevant documents.

Big Tech firms face brunt of China’s new push to clean up internet content

Beijing initially published rules on real-name registration in February 2015. This version asked internet account owners, including institutions or individuals, to provide their identity information when they register on platforms for microblogging and instant messaging.

The CAC’s proposed update on real-name registration is based on existing rules and regulations, including China’s Cybersecurity Law, which was rolled out in 2017, and the Personal Information Protection Law, which will take effect on November 1.

It highlights Beijing’s drive to create a “clean and healthy” cyberspace, free from information it deems harmful to society, which has recently come to include apolitical content such as stock market analysis and celebrity gossip.

A set of guidelines issued by CAC in September emphasised that online platforms are responsible for managing their content, directing them to enhance self-censorship and the censorship of content generated by their legions of users.
China’s internet watchdog has been steadily tightening its grip on activities in the nation’s cyberspace. The CAC laid out a three-year plan to rein in the use of algorithms by app operators in September.

The regulator also published a detailed 10-point notice, ordering China’s websites and apps to stop giving excessive exposure to celebrities and prohibiting their fans from forming online clubs. It has also started a campaign to clean up app alerts, specifically prohibiting those about celebrity gossip, violence and vulgar content.

In August, the CAC launched a campaign to crack down on citizen journalists who “misinterpret economic policies and forecast doom and gloom in financial markets”. This action targeted certain websites and so-called self-media accounts – independently operated public social media accounts, typically on WeChat and Weibo – that have been accused of spreading rumours and using fake news to blackmail companies.

“The internet has become the main battlefield of ideology,” the CUC’s Wang said. “The country will need to tighten up the process of publishing information, and providing details about the identification and location of the publisher, to make sure online services are being used legally.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: China updates rules on censored social media accounts in clean-up push
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