China’s top internet regulator said on Tuesday it will be on Biteedance-owned news app Jinri Toutiao and Alibaba’s Internet browser company UCWEB allegedly showed harmful content, a day after announcing a two-month crackdown on social media.
China’s Cyberspace Administration (CAC) vowed on Monday to crack down on content “malicious incitement to undermine conflict” and “negative views on life like the wear and tear of the world.”
Beijing requires social media companies to do medium content on their platforms and strictly control posts to avoid anything that is considered too subversive, vulgar, pornographic or generally harmful.
CAC has announced this month fines for ignoring content management responsibilities for three popular digital platforms, Weibo platform Micro, short video app Kuaichu and Instagram-like Xiaohongshu-for.
Authorities have not specified punitive measures to be taken against these platforms.
The measures taken against Toutiao, a news aggregator app, include “convening companies to meet, ordering rectification within designated time limits, issuing warnings, and strictly dealing with those in charge”, CAC said Tuesday.
The statement said the platform failed to fulfill its primary responsibility for managing information content and allowed “harmful content” to appear in the main section of its trend search list, “and thus harming the online ecosystem.”
It provides no further details about content types or penalties. “Internet regulators will continue to focus on prominent illegal and non-compliant activities that undermine the online ecosystem,” the CAC added.
In another statement Tuesday, CAC said it would take similar measures after Alibaba-owned platforms showed entries related to topics such as “extremely sensitive and malicious” incidents and “online violence and privacy of minors.”
The two-month campaign announced by the CAC on Monday aims to “regulate the malicious incitement of conflict and promote violence and vicious currents.”
The statement then lists specific online issues that authorities hope to address in the crackdown, including “exploiting social hotspots to forcefully associate identity, region or gender with other information, stigmatization and publicity.”
