China penalises ByteDance and Alibaba platforms in content crackdown
\nPlatform had failed to fulfil its primary responsibility of managing information content
\nnews agency
\nbeijing
\nChina\u2019s top internet regulator said Tuesday it would take action against ByteDance-owned news app Jinri Toutiao and Alibaba\u2019s internet browser company UCWeb for allegedly displaying harmful content, a day after announcing a two-month social media crackdown.
\nThe Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) vowed on Monday to combat content containing \u201cmalicious incitement of conflict\u201d and \u201cnegative outlooks on life such as world-weariness\u201d.
\nBeijing requires social media companies to moderate content on their platforms, with posts strictly controlled to avoid anything deemed to be too subversive, vulgar, pornographic or generally harmful.
\nThe CAC had already announced penalties this month against three popular digital platforms\u2014 micro-blogging platform Weibo, short video app Kuaishou and Instagram-like Xiaohongshu\u2014for allegedly neglecting content management duties.
\nAuthorities have not specified what punitive actions are being taken against those platforms.
\nThe CAC said on Tuesday that measures taken against news aggregator app Toutiao included \u201csummoning the company for a meeting, ordering rectification within a specified time limit, issuing a warning, and strictly dealing with those responsible\u201d.
\nThe platform had failed to fulfil its primary responsibility of managing information content and allowed \u201charmful content\u201d to appear on the main section of its trending search list, \u201cthereby damaging the online ecosystem\u201d, the statement said. It gave no further details about the content type or punishments.
\n\u201cInternet regulators will continue to focus on prominent illegal and non-compliant activities that undermine the online ecosystem,\u201d the CAC added.
\nIn a separate statement on Tuesday, the CAC said it would take similar measures against UCWeb after the Alibaba-owned platform displayed entries relating to \u201cextremely sensitive and malicious\u201d events and topics such as \u201conline violence and the privacy of minors\u201d.
\nThe two-month campaign announced on Monday by the CAC aims \u201cto regulate the malicious incitement of conflict and the promotion of violence and vicious currents\u201d, the CAC said.
\nThe statement then listed specific online issues authorities hope to tackle in the crackdown, including \u201cexploiting social hot spots to forcibly associate identity, region or gender with other information, stigmatising and hyping them\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China penalises ByteDance and Alibaba platforms in content crackdown Platform had failed to fulfil its primary responsibility of managing information content news agency beijing China\u2019s top internet regulator said Tuesday it would take action against ByteDance-owned news app Jinri Toutiao and Alibaba\u2019s internet browser company UCWeb for allegedly displaying harmful content, a day after announcing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504658,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n