China’s Major Social Platforms to Cooperate With Authorities in Cybersecurity

Сhina’s leading social networks pledged to cooperate with the country’s authorities after an investigation was open into the companies over alleged violations of cybersecurity law, local media reported on Saturday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced that the Tieba communication platform, the WeChat messenger and Weibo, which is the analogue of Twitter, were suspected of breaching cybersecurity law by not fulfilling their responsibility in censoring illegal content posted on the networks by their users.

According to the CGTN TV channel, all three companies made separate statements earlier in the day declaring their readiness to actively cooperate with the CAC and expressing regret over the existence of violations.

In June, China enacted a new cybersecurity law, which rules that sensitive information related to the country's national security — which many consider a vague definition — has to be stored on servers within the country's territory. Although these regulations impose a significant financial toll on Internet services providers, the government argues that the law will protect private information of Internet users and ensure the country's cybersecurity.

Several of the most popular websites in the world are banned in China, including Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and a number of top world media.

On Friday, The New York Times newspaper reported, citing its source, that Facebook launched its mobile application in China under a different name. According to the media, the Colorful Balloons app, released in May by the Youge Internet Technology, completely repeats the interface and the functions of the Moments app, developed by Facebook, and can be used by the WeChat users.