The Chinese government has decide to wipe-off anonymous and fake social media accounts to revamp its security in the country.
According to reports, China has ordered its citizens that users of local and international social media services will have to give their real names and identification data in order to be eligible to use the service. The regulatory authorities have said that in the past, many security breaches were surfaced because of fake social media accounts, in which the culprits were impersonating governmental, law enforcing figures to deceive the public.
A statement issued online by the Chinese authorities said that users will have to make their accounts with real name. However, they can use screen names of their choice, provided that they don’t contain any illicit and unreasonable names. Similarly, profile pictures will also be under check from the Chinese regulatory authorities for the social media.
China has always been a staunch and vehement opponent of social media freedom, blogging and US based social media services. A few months ago, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg went to China and conducted a public meeting where he delivered a talk in Chinese language, an apparent effort to soften up the Chinese authorities for smooth operations of Facebook inside the country. But that effort seems to not have worked.
Sources think that latest move from the Chinese government is a threat to freedom of speech for local platforms. QQ, Weibo’ Tieba are some of the pronounced social media outlets in China. The internet users in China grew by 649 million in 2014, and the government is worried about increasing freedom of speech enjoyed by users on blogs, comments and social media platforms.
The registration process for social media users for giving their real names will start from 1st March 2015. All those users who don’t comply to this rule will be banned from using social media in China.