China cracks down on social media
The Chinese government has announced new restrictions on social media in an effort to clamp down on dissent.
The New York Times reports the State Internet Information Office is overseeing the effort. One part of the new regulations is that anyone with a public account must register with their real name and sign a contract where they promise to "obey the law and uphold the socialist system."
The new regulation affects every aspect of social media from corporations and celebrities to journalists, non-governmental organizations, and regular people.
A primary focus of the crackdown is said to be the app and messaging service WeChat. The three-year old application has 400 million active users a month. WeChat allows people to share images, video, audio, and text.
The restrictions on WeChat come after the recent banning of two South Korean services, KakaoTalk and Line.
China is already cut off from much of the rest of the world's Internet by the Great Firewall, which limits what websites Chinese web users are allowed to visit. For example, Facebook and Twitter are inaccessible in China.
In 2013, a similar crackdown took place on China's version of Twitter, Weibo. The crackdown saw hundreds of popular Weibo users arrested and charged with spreading lies. This caused many people to flea Weibo for WeChat, according to the Times.
In a statement, WeChat said that it would comply with the requests of the Chinese authorities. The company claimed to have already created a system by which to identify and remove rumors, or "anything that defies national law and policies and social morals." Since May, WeChat has deleted 400 public accounts and 20 million others that the company claims were involved in the promotion of prostitution.
