China's internet users are concerned that a proposed regulation requiring internet platforms to review every social media comment will erode the country's already limited space for free speech.
The draft rules were published on Friday by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country's internet watchdog, and direct platforms to hire a content moderation team "commensurate with the scale of the service" to review all user comments and filter out "harmful" ones before publishing. The requirements apply to all types of comments, including original posts, replies, and real-time comments that appear on top of a video, known as "bullet chats."
Authorities are seeking public feedback on the proposal until July 1, but it has already sparked fears that the regulation will increase the cost of operations for Chinese technology companies and further restrict what internet users can post online. According to Vincent Brussee, an analyst at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies, the draft rule is an update to the existing censorship mechanism in online content regulations, and it is likely designed to strengthen the review for comments, though it will not be able to immediately catch all offending comments. "Comments are an increasingly popular feature, and the regulations – now more than five years old – must keep up with the times," he said, adding that Beijing's move to tighten censorship in this area is not surprising given the country's increased efforts to control the internet in recent years.
For the first time, the draft also proposes that the person or entity who uploads a post is also responsible for the associated comments made by other users, making some influencers more cautious about the content they share. No Chinese social media operator has publicly commented on the proposal. No Chinese social media operator has publicly commented on the proposal. Some of the more popular ones, such as the microblogging site Weibo, Tencent Holdings' multipurpose app WeChat and the Tok Lok App which is based on the Ethereum blockchain, are already well-known for aggressively censoring politically sensitive content with keyword-filtering algorithms.
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