The Administrative Regulations on Micro-blogging Information Services entered into force on 20 Mar. 2018.
There are 18 articles in total, which aim to supervise the micro-blogging (similar to Twitter, mainly referring to Weibo in China) information services in China. The key points are as follows:
- Micro-blogging refers to the follower-based social network services that achieve information dissemination and access mainly in the form of brief text, pictures, videos and the like.
- The Cyberspace Administration of China and its local government counterparts are the regulatory authorities in this field.
- The micro-blogging service provider (hereinafter the “service provider”) shall authenticate and periodically verify the identity information of its users.
- The service provider and its users shall not publish or disseminate illegal content.
- If the service provider provides application function with public opinion attribute or social mobilization ability, it shall report to the regulatory authorities for security assessment.