Worried about crossing the road whereas posting in China? Never concern, for Chinese business group the Netcasting Services Association has posted a useful listing of 100 subjects that ought to by no means be broached in brief movies on apps like Douyin.

The “Online Short Video Content Review Standard Rules 2021” (dated to Dec. 15) include the everyday prohibitions on questioning state management or the official model of Chinese historical past but in addition embrace bans on such subjects as utilizing clips of TV exhibits with out authorization, depicting intercourse or unconventional marriage, or discussions of utmost politics like fascism. Videos that promote cryptocurrency are off-limits, as are another subjects. The Register summarized among the different banned themes as:

• Drug use, and the consequences of getting taken medicine;
• Gambling machines;
• Organised crime actions and gangs;
• Glorification or glamorisation of crime;
• Violence or psychological abuse.

Lying about charitable donations has additionally made the naughty listing. Also incomes a pink line is any dialogue evaluating religions, if it might provoke sectarianism.

Some of the principles are extremely broad, similar to prohibitions towards characters with over-exaggerated or unusual conduct that censors might view as having a detrimental impression on minors, failure to tell apart between truth and fiction, debauched existence, maliciously posting out of context clips (ahem) characterizing police exercise as violent, or content material that’s shallow and violates public order or customs. Others are quite particular, similar to prohibitions on selling notoriously aggressive on-line fandoms called fan quan, glorification of on-line movie star typically, or creating channels devoted to witchcraft. One carve-out on the finish might discuss with virtually something on an arbitrary foundation, with the final merchandise translated by the Register as prohibiting “Other violation of laws, regulations and social public order and good customs.”

The listing seems to largely resemble pointers beforehand issued by the government-appointed physique in 2019, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. A translated model of the 2019 release exhibits that cryptocurrency promotion didn’t beforehand seem on the listing of prohibited subjects. Since then, the Chinese authorities’s perspective in the direction of cryptocurrency has hardened, issuing further prohibitions towards its mining or buying and selling and dispatching regulators to extra proactively implement these guidelines.

In the U.S., content material choice moderation choices are usually left as much as particular person firms, for higher or for worse. Some of the content material listed by the Netcasting Services Association is sort of universally banned by Western tech companies for good purpose, like glorifying suicide, depiction of brutal real-life violence and torture or animal abuse, and fabricated charitable endeavors. In a couple of excessive instances, similar to baby intercourse abuse content material or terrorism promotion, business giants have joined collectively in associations to higher meet shared requirements and coordinate databases of prohibited content material (such because the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism).

The distinction right here, nonetheless, will not be solely the breadth of the subjects prohibited however that Chinese business associations are successfully under the control of the federal government. Censorship of delicate subjects is commonly carried out by the personal sector underneath strain authorities; CNN recently reported that microblogging platform Weibo has been fined dozens of instances all through 2021 for failure to adjust to the principles quick or successfully sufficient.

It’s additionally essential to know, as Human Rights Watch identified in a 2020 report, that digital censorship is tightly intertwined with nationalism in China, and lots of internet-savvy younger folks view the principles as defending social stability and (for very comprehensible causes) shielding the Chinese web from dominance by overseas tech companies. Some of the preferred content material on the Chinese internet is charmingly healthful, similar to videos of farm life and elderly fashion icons.

Most of the subjects have been already prohibited in some method earlier than the rollout of the business affiliation guidelines in 2019, based on the . In 2019, the Wall Street Journal wrote that the listing doubtless displays discomfort within the Chinese authorities concerning the ease by which short-form video apps like Douyin (ByteDance’s native model of TikTok) and Kuaishou, or related options in different apps just like the practically universally used WeChat, can unfold messages it doesn’t like.

Ben Cavender, a senior analyst at China Market Research Group, informed the Journal: “short video platforms are worrisome because the content is fluid, can be very sticky and get a lot of viewership fast.”