Regulation in China
In cooperation with internet censorship in China, Sina sets strict controls over the posts on its services.[60][61] Posts with links using some URL shortening services (including Google's goo.gl), or containing blacklisted keywords,[62][63] are not allowed on Sina Weibo. Posts on politically sensitive topics are deleted after manual checking. Users with few followers may be able to post on censored topics with relative freedom until they reach a critical mass of followers, which triggers enforced content supervision.[64]
Sina Weibo is believed to employ a distributed, heterogeneous strategy for censorship that has a great amount of defense-in-depth, which ranges from keyword list filtering to individual user monitoring. Nearly 30% of the total deletion events occur within 5–30 minutes, and nearly 90% of the deletions happen within the first 24 hours.[65]
On 9 March 2010, the posts by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei at Sina Weibo to appeal for information on the 2008 Sichuan earthquake going public were deleted and his account was closed by the site administrator. Attempts to register accounts with usernames alluding to Ai Weiwei were blocked.[66] On 30 March 2010, Hong Kong singer Gigi Leung blogged about the jailed Zhao Lianhai, an activist and father to a 2008 Chinese milk scandal victim; that post was also deleted by an administrator shortly thereafter.[67]
On 16 March 2012, all users of Sina Weibo in Beijing were told to register with their real names.[68]
Starting on 31 March 2012, the comment function of Sina Weibo was shut down for three days, along with Tencent QQ.[69][70]
In May 2012, Sina Weibo introduced new restrictions on the content its users can post.[71]
In October 2012, Sina Weibo heavily censored discussion of the Foxconn strikes in October 2012.[72]
On 4 June 2013, Sina Weibo blocked the terms "Today", "Tonight", "June 4", and "Big Yellow Duck". If a user searched using these terms, a message would appear stating that according to relevant laws, statutes and policies, the results of the search couldn't be shown. This censorship was implemented because a photoshopped version of Tank Man which swapped all tanks in the photo with the sculpture Rubber Duck had been circulating on Twitter.[73][74]
On 8 September 2017, Weibo gave an ultimatum to its users to verify their accounts with their real names by 15 September.[75] The platform announced that same month that it would hire 1000 "supervisors" from among its users to engage in censorship. These supervisors were supposed to report at least 200 content pieces per month, with those with the best results being rewarded with special prizes, including iPhones and notebooks.[76]
On 18 February 2018, Sina Weibo provided a "Comment moderation" function for both head users and official members. Comments received after opening this feature will not be displayed immediately, instead of requiring approval from moderators. Users can utilize this feature to avoid illegal content appearing in their comment section.[77]
In April 2018, Weibo began a crackdown on anime, games, and short videos depicting "pornography, gore, violence and homosexuality". The CCP criticized Weibo's move, following which the company decided to exclude homosexual content from the purge.[78]
On 11 June 2020, the Cybersecurity Administration of China ordered Weibo to suspend its "trending topics" page for a week. The CAC accused Weibo of "dissemination of illegal information".[79]
On 22 February 2022, Horizon News accidentally posted on its Weibo page its instructions not to post anti-Russia content related to the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.[80]
In January 2023, Sina Weibo suspended more than 1,000 social media accounts of critics of the Chinese government response to COVID-19.[81]
