A Stream of Bans

After banning most social networking sites, China has now shut down several live streaming platforms. China’s Ministry of Culture has closed 10 hosting platforms and punished several companies for streaming content related to pornography, gambling, and content that was superstitious in nature. The country has also closed down 30,000 studios producing such content, given administrative punishment to 48 companies and terminated the contracts of 547 broadcasters. The business models of these hosting platforms are similar to ones offered by Facebook and YouTube, where the company hosting the content and the creator divide the ad revenues between them.