A sweeping two-month crackdown on online content is coming in China, aiming to restrict posts expressing views from hostility and conflict to “world-weariness,” Beijing’s top internet regulator announced on Monday.
Monday’s notice from the Cyberspace Administration of China did not specify when the content crackdown would begin. It follows an announcement on Saturday saying the CAC would would take “disciplinary and punitive measures” against Weibo, a micro-blogging platform, and Kuaishou, a short-form video service — and a similar action taken on Sept. 11 against Xiaohongshu, the Instagram-like social-media service known in English as Rednote. The CAC hasn’t specified what those disciplinary measures are.
The CAC said that it would target posts that include rumors about China’s economy — which has struggled this year — as well as fabricated information and “sensational conspiracy theories.”
China’s restrictions on social media are typically much tighter than the moderation methods common on Western social platforms. Last year, the CAC began a crackdown on slang and abbreviations on social media, on top of the database of “sensitive words” censors already ban from use on the internet.
Officials in Xinjiang last year banned ethnic Uyghurs from using social media apps. Censors tightened restrictions on posts by Tibetans ahead of the Dalai Lama’s birthday last year. Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong say scrutiny of social media and police action based on social posts have intensified since the Article 23 national security law went into effect.
Includes reporting from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
