Weibo. | Photo: Jon Russell / Flickr
Chinese social media app Weibo just announced it’s removing gay and violent content across the microblogging site.
China’s most popular social media site announced the removal of content yesterday (13 April) in a bid to ‘clean-up’ the site. It will delete pictures, cartoons and text posts, during a three-month removal cleanse.
It’s a social media platform similar to Twitter, attracting over 392 million monthly active users.
Weibo announced the move on its official administrator’s account. It comes about in order to comply with China’s new cyber security law that calls for strict data surveillance.
The statement specifically mentioned ‘manga and videos with pornographic implications, promoting violence or (related to) homosexuality.’
It specifically mentions violent games like Grand Theft Auto.
Weibo users flood site with ‘I am gay’
This led to a flurry of responses from users of the social media platform who flooded the post with pro-gay content.
It caused the hash tag ‘I am gay’ to start trending on the site, according to Reuters.
#我是同性恋 #I AM GAY We were born in China, but our country does not love us, why treat us as monsters, we are gay, we need equality, we need human rights. 我们出生在中国，但是我们的国家却不爱我们，为什么把我们当成怪物，我们是同性恋，我们需要平等，我们需要人权。 pic.twitter.com/9FRRIVaRyr
— 凌晨 Artist (@Marc1107678151) 14 April 2018
Social media users flooded the post with more than 24,000 comments and forwarded more than 110,000 times.
One user commented: ‘I am gay and I’m proud, even if I get taken down there are tens of millions like me!’
Weibo then blocked a lot of users posting the illegal pro-gay content.
