Fake accounts pretending to be govt organisations, celebrities and officials are banned
Beijing: Further tightening its control over Internet use, China has barred use of nicknames such as ‘Obama’ and ‘Putin’ in cyberspace and put in place processes to filter out “malicious” and “pornographic” content.
Fake and parody accounts pretending to be government organisations, celebrities and officials are banned, the Cyberspace Administration of China said, as are nicknames that appear to advertise cults or pornography, or that damage state security.
CAC further said that the new restrictions were aimed at users, who took inappropriate online names such as Putin and Obama, promoted “vulgar culture,” and committed fraud by pretending to be Communist Party officials.
The new rules require users of blogs and chat rooms to register their names with operators and promise in writing to avoid challenging the Communist political system.
“The rules require netizens to use registered account names on virtually all platforms, including blogs, social networking tools and messaging applications,” Xu Feng, director of the administration’s mobile network management bureau was quoted as saying by the state-run China Daily.
China has the world’s biggest population of Internet users with 649 million people online.
The new rule will take effect on March 1 and they applies to chat rooms, blogs, instant messaging services and all other Internet services. The regulation stipulates that avatars and account handles should not include information that violates the Constitution or China’s laws, subverts state power, undermines national security and sovereignty, or is deemed rumour mongering.
The CAC shut down 133 accounts on instant messaging app WeChat for publishing illegal content that “disobeyed socialist core values” and “severely disturbed the online order”.
