Beijing Internet regulators ask key self- media platforms to manage content

Information management regulators in Beijing on Tuesday ordered several self- media platforms to manage unregulated contents.

The Beijing Cyberspace Administration on Tuesday talked to managers from websites including Sohu, NetEase, Phoenix, Tencent, Baidu, toutiao. com and yidianzixun. com and ordered them to remove the contents with eight kinds of problems, the official WeChat platform of the administration posted Wednesday.

The problems include “misreading the policies,” “spreading false information,” “distorting the history of China and the Party,” “promoting abnormal values” and “violating intellectual property,” read the post.

The administration indicated that the problems occurred because the self- media platforms did not maintain the correct orientation for public opinion and had an incomplete management system that failed to examine the contents, according to the post.

These self- media platforms also had problems such as weak legal awareness and blind pursuit of readers, it said.

Meanwhile, the regulator also publicized specific examples that presented the eight problems.

For example, an article on the Baijia platform of Baidu said that the government policies on real estate are to blame for the rise in housing prices in Beijing, which was regarded by the administration as “irresponsibly attacking a government regulatory target.”

An account on Tencent’s self- media platform posted an article titled “a Chinese war- plane crashed on a US aircraft carrier, killing three US soldiers?” which was later found to be a plot from a US TV series. The post was published in a news form, which the regulator said misleads the readers.