- The new Fanno shopping app from ByteDance was recently launched in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain
- ByteDance introduced its new e-commerce app in Europe days before the start of the Black Friday shopping event on November 26
Live-streaming stars Xueli Cherie and Lin Shanshan were targeted by China’s internet watchdog. Photo: Weibo
China’s internet censors are taking down top influencers for not being good enough socialists
- Luo Changping’s Weibo account, with 2 million followers, was closed in October after he was arrested for posting ‘insults’ about Chinese soldiers portrayed in a movie
- Top influencers, even if they are individuals or private firms, must abide by the law and ‘vigorously promote core socialist values’, the internet watchdog said
Topic |
Censorship in China
Live-streaming stars Xueli Cherie and Lin Shanshan were targeted by China’s internet watchdog. Photo: Weibo
China’s internet watchdog shut down or suspended more than 20,000 influential social media accounts in 2021 – some with tens of millions of followers amassed over many years – for reasons that ranged from “misuse” to not promoting “core socialist” values.
The ruthless crackdown is part of Beijing’s efforts to achieve absolute control of all online content amid ongoing tensions with the West and ahead of a sensitive year for Chinese politics.
Among the top influencers, Luo Changping, a former investigative journalist who used China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform Weibo to uncover a corrupt senior economic planner in 2012, was arrested for posting “insulting comments” about Chinese soldiers portrayed in a recent blockbuster movie about the Korean war. His Weibo account, with over 2 million followers, was shut down in October.
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