According to reliable source, it is really rare to view the story especially about the coarse side of Chinese life without an angry reaction from Weibo’s online mob and a mention of an overseas gossip website.
However, it is worth to note that authorities are not at all satisfied to online gossipy world. The reason behind this is perhaps the gossip in most of the case is aimed at officials and politicians. It is significant that the rumors dated back to few years earlier when the state runs newspapers compared rumors in 2011 to cocaine and heroin.
At the opening of August, a joint website, named “websites jointly debunking rumors platform” is launched by six of the biggest websites of Chine that include Baidu and Sina Weibo. The new website is designed to modify the rumors publish online. Few days after this, reliable sources informed that they have gathered 100,000 brief statements regarding online rumors.
As revealed in recent reports, several online rumormongers have been arrested around the nation. Moreover, it is informed that authorities have targeted several “black PR” firms, which are believed to be utilized in order to spread false rumors about business rivals and also alleged to have had around 220 million followers on several accounts on Weibo.
Although it is true that black PR sounds bad, however, some of the punishments gave out to the bloggers is undoubtedly harsh. Reliable sources informed that Yu Heyu was arrested and detained for five days after the authorities found that he had revealed some misleading information regarding an a street accident taking place on highway. However, authorities also admitted the fact that the punishment was too harsh.
Although there is not any proper and authentic information regarding the number of people arrested for spreading rumor, several sources informed that Sanghai police alone investigated almost 380 cases of rumors with near about 170 suspects in this year.
It is worth to mention over here that lot of countries around the world have laws that are designed to limit potentially damaging and unfounded rumors. However, most strikingly, it is notable that most of the nations are now struggling to find out the best effective way to utilize and manage the laws regarding the use of the internet.
The most striking things about the Chinese onslaught on the rumor mongers is that the authorities are not only taking strict steps to the rumor mongers for spreading rumors using different social sites but they are in reality detaining and arresting people under the laws what is actually seems exceptionally broad. As being stated by reliable source that authorities even interfere in the private messaging apps including WeChat and apply the law against rumor mongering for the app also.
Moreover, this creates a more worried situation that if any true story disturbed any illegal act of China Government, they can also consider the act as rumormongering and take legal steps against the person or the institution.