Social-Networking Apps Report Service Outages in China


Social-Networking Apps Report Service Outages in China
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Social-Networking Apps Report Service Outages in China
Over the years, the Chinese government has kept tight reins on both new and traditional media in an effort to avoid subversion of the authority. This entails the employment of strict media controls that make use of monitoring systems, websites or shuttering publications and jailing dissident bloggers, journalists and activists. The media censorship severity grabbed headlines as early as 2013 when the ‘Southern Weekly’ published a confrontation with the government after a pro-reform editorial rewrote by the local propaganda authorities. This has been the trend since then with the last cases being the measures taken by the government to limit usage of some if the sites like Kakao and Line Corp. The burgeoning economy of the county has allowed for greater diversity in the media coverage and it is believed that the growing Chinese demand for information is testing the control over the media. This is why the government continues to tighten control and monitoring of the messaging apps, networking and the Internet (Johnson, 2014)
In 2010, the government introduced its first white paper with regards to the Internet which emphasized the internet sovereignty concept requiring Internet users in the country including foreign individuals and organizations, to abide by the Chinese regulations and laws. The regime uses the Internet to extend its control as well as enhance its legitimacy. The Internet companies in China are now expected to sign the Public Piedge that is on Professional Ethics and Self-Regulation for China Internet Industry. This move entails stricter rules compared to those initially in the white paper. The government announced that it will monitor apps like WeChat more heavily insisting that instant messaging services were commonly used to spread terrorism, violence and pornography like the latest incident where Kakao and Line Corp. apps being accused of spreading rumors on the pro-democracy demonstrations (Mozur and Cheng, 2014).
Despite more 140 million Internet us...