On Monday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced its commitment to combat online content that contains “malicious incitement of conflict” and “negative outlooks on life such as world-weariness.”
Beijing requires social media companies to strictly moderate content on their platforms, with posts being controlled to avoid anything considered subversive, vulgar, pornographic, or generally harmful.
This month, the CAC had already announced penalties against three popular digital platforms—micro-blogging platform Weibo, short video app Kuaishou, and Instagram-like Xiaohongshu—for allegedly failing to manage content on their sites. Authorities have not specified the exact punitive actions taken against them.
On Tuesday, the CAC stated that actions against news aggregator app Toutiao included “summoning the company for a meeting, ordering rectification within a specified time limit, issuing a warning, and strictly dealing with those responsible.” According to the statement, the platform failed to fulfill its primary duty of managing content and allowed “harmful content” to appear on its trending search list, which “damaged the online ecosystem.” No further details about the specific content or punishments were provided. The CAC added that “internet regulators will continue to focus on prominent illegal and non-compliant activities that undermine the online ecosystem.”
In a separate statement on Tuesday, the CAC said it would take similar measures against UCWeb, an Alibaba-owned platform, for displaying entries related to “extremely sensitive and malicious” topics like “online violence and the privacy of minors.” The two-month campaign, announced by the CAC on Monday, aims “to regulate the malicious incitement of conflict and the promotion of violence and vicious currents.” The statement then listed specific online issues authorities plan to tackle, including “exploiting social hot spots to forcibly associate identity, region or gender with other information, stigmatising and hyping them.”
