The Communist Party of China issued “new rules for the management of public accounts on the Internet,” and webmasters became the focus of monitoring

The Chinese government has once again escalated its efforts to regulate online public opinion. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, the State Internet Information Office released the newly revised “Regulations on the Administration of Public Account Information Services for Internet Users” on Jan. 22, specifically addressing such issues as the so-called “lack of implementation of main responsibilities, indifferent awareness of self-discipline and self-discipline, and lack of content review and gate-keeping mechanisms” of public account information service platforms and producers and operators, adding 23 corresponding regulatory content.

The report said that the new provisions for account classification registration, real identity registration, verification of the main qualification, account trading, combating network rumors, account operation norms, data flow falsification and other outstanding issues, new management provisions. The platform can suspend or terminate the provision of services according to the service agreement for public accounts that are not logged in or used by users for more than six months after registration.

The new rules also require the public account information service platform to strengthen the supervision and management of the public account information service activities on this platform, and timely find and dispose of illegal and irregular information or behavior.

The new rules have come into effect since February 22.