China's SART Orders Closure of Bytedance's Joke Sharing Platform
TechWeb, 4/11/18
China's National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) has announced that while overseeing the rectification work of online and mobile news platform Today's Headlines, it has discovered obvious problems of vulgar and misguided content on affiliate brand Neihan Duanzi's mobile app and related official account on Tencent's (0700.HK) WeChat mobile messaging app. SART has ordered Beijing-based operator Bytedance Technology to shutter the joke and entertainment content-sharing platform in accordance with law and instructed Bytedance to clean up all similar audio-visual program products.
In an apology letter issued by founder Zhang Yiming, Bytedance promised not only to permanently close Neihan Duanzi, but to fully redress the flaws in its algorithms and machine auditing. In order to strengthen its manual operations and verification, Bytedance will expand its censorship team from 6,000 to 10,000 individuals. Bytedance will also create a blacklist mechanism to permanently block authors who violate community values. Bytedance's products will also launch systems to combat addictiveness, rumors, and vulgarity.
Keywords: regulation penalty wireless Bytedance Today's Headlines Zhang Yiming content-sharing Neihan Duanzi NRTA