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China Launches Two-Month Social Media Crackdown Targeting Incitement and Pessimism

The regulator will scrutinize trending lists, recommendations, comment areas following penalties for major platforms this month.

Overview

  • The Cyberspace Administration of China announced a nationwide campaign to curb content that promotes violent or hostile sentiment online.
  • Authorities said they will target fabricated information, economic rumours, distorted incident narratives and what they called sensational conspiracy theories.
  • Posts that promote bleak outlooks on life, including messages such as "hard work is useless" or "studying is useless," will face heightened scrutiny.
  • Platforms will face comprehensive inspections of trending topics, recommendation feeds and user comment sections to enforce content rules.
  • The notice followed recent disciplinary actions against Weibo, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, while officials did not specify the campaign's start date or detail penalties; Beijing police separately took compulsory measures against three people accused of faking videos about actor Yu Menglong's death.