China is targeting popular smartphone-based instant messaging services in a month-long campaign to crack down on the spreading of rumors and what it calls infiltration of hostile forces, in the latest move restricting online freedom of expression.
Such services incorporate social media functions that allow users to post photographs and updates to their friends, or follow the feeds of companies, social groups or celebrities, and — more worryingly for the government — intellectuals, journalists and activists. They also post news reports shunned by mainstream media.
Xinhua news agency said the crackdown on people spreading rumors and information related to violence, terrorism and pornography started on Tuesday and would target public accounts on services, including WeChat, run by Tencent Holdings, which has surged in popularity in the past two years.
Tencent and other companies did not answer calls or immediately respond to e-mailed requests for comment.
Noting that such services had become popular online communication channels, Xinhua said: “Some people have used them to distribute illegal and harmful information, seriously undermining public interests and order in cyberspace.”
“We will firmly fight against infiltration from hostile forces at home and abroad,” Xinhua quoted a statement from the Chinese Cabinet’s Internet Information Office as saying.
This is China’s first major campaign covering mobile phone messaging platforms, said Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting, a Beijing-based Internet and mobile research company.
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