Chinese regulator summons ByteDance, Alibaba's platforms over content violations

China's cyberspace regulator summoned ByteDance's news platform Toutiao and Alibaba's internet browser operator UCWeb over content violations, making them the latest companies to be targeted by a government crackdown on user behaviour online.

Both platforms were recently penalised for content that "disrupted the online ecosystem order", the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said on Tuesday in two separate statements, mentioning in both that the penalties included "strict disciplinary actions against responsible personnel."

CAC on Monday declared a two-month nationwide campaign to curb any online content that promotes violent or hostile sentiment in society, the latest drive in the internet regulator's years-long goal of creating a "clean and healthy" Chinese cyberspace free of any negative or critical sentiments and that also extols the ruling Communist Party's socialist values.

Toutiao was deemed to have allowed "harmful content" to appear on its trending topic lists and other locations while UCWeb was charged with "allowing non-authoritative sources and non-mainstream media to flood its main trending topics list with entries related to extremely sensitive and malicious cases and events," according to CAC.

"These entries involved topics such as cyberbullying and the privacy of minors," the regulator said of UCWeb.

Both statements concluded with CAC pledging to "wield the 'sharp sword' of online law enforcement" to create a "clean and healthy cyberspace."

CAC last week took similar action against major platforms, including short-video app Kuaishou, microblogging site Weibo, and Instagram-like Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, over content violations.

Concern over negative sentiment has deepened this year as China's economy has struggled, while youth joblessness has remained a pressing issue

Separately, other Chinese regulatory bodies have started to increase their scrutiny on other parts of the country's sprawling private sector.

China's market watchdog on Tuesday summoned cargo service platform Huolala to order the company to "strictly comply" with the country's anti-monopoly law, just four days after launching an investigation into Kuaigou, an e-commerce platform under live-streaming service provider Kuaishou, for suspected violations of the nation's e-commerce law.