Pressure from China’s internet regulator has lead Weibo Corp. to suspend some of its microblogging functions, having allegedly failed to remove inappropriate content, Caixin Global reports.
Weibo’s ‘hot tag’ function, akin to a twitter hashtag, went out of operation on Saturday evening following an announcement by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) that this feature had lead to “spreading obscene and wrongly oriented content”. The CAC has so far not detailed which content it deemed inappropriate.
‘Hot tag’ mainly allows users to follow celebrity news and videos, and is used by consumer companies to track the publics minute-by-minute online interests.
The CAC is continuing to tighten restrictions on cyber content, extending its jurisdiction to pop-culture content following new cybersecurity laws introduced in June. Central social networks such as Weibo and WeChat have been a key focus for this initiative, which until recently were common sources of online tabloid news.
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