The Government of China Wants to Control All Social Media Comments

• Maybe China will review every comment before it goes on Social Media 
• A Chinese internet watchdog shared possible rules on Friday. It wants social media companies to check new comments.
• Social media users are worried that the rules will be too strong.

China will maybe soon review every comment before it goes on social media. This makes social media users scared because China already has a lot of censorship.

On Friday, a Chinese internet watchdog shared new, possible rules on its website. The rules want social media companies to review all comments from users before they are shared online. The rules also want the social media companies to report “illegal and bad information” to the government.

The notice from the watchdog says that the rules are to protect Chinese citizens and national security. The public can give feedback on the new rules until July 1.

The new rules have not started yet. However, social media users in China have already said that they are worried about free speech online. The South China Morning Post says that rules like these usually go into effect without any big changes.

On Weibo, which is similar to Twitter, a hashtag about the new rules has been viewed more than 35.2 million times.

One user on Weibo says that they can’t imagine the internet with only one voice, or one opinion. The user wonders if people in the real world will think there is only one way of thinking.

Social media companies in China already block posts and content that are critical of the Chinese government. They also block posts and content about issues like not enough food for people in Shanghai because of strict Covid-19 lockdowns.

However, the MIT Technology Review says that other posts and comments on posts are usually not reviewed.

The MIT Technology Review also said that there were recently strange cases in which comments under Chinese government posts were very critical or anti-government.

At the beginning of this month, a famous influencer in China called Li Jiaqi suddenly went offline after he promoted ice cream that looked like a tank. That happened one day before the heavily-censored Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Insider reported that some of Li Jiaqi’s fans on Weibo still commented about the important event in online comments.