BEIJING, September 14 (TMTPost) -- The Cyberspace Administration of China has instructed the Guangdong Provincial Cyberspace Administration to summon the relevant person in charge of Tencent in connection with a large amount of illegal information such as pornography on the Tencent QQ platform's "Small World" section.

The regulator said that it posed a threat to the physical and mental health of minors. national regulator told the provincial regulator to impose administrative penalties on the related entity, order a 30-day suspension of information updates in the "Small World" section, confiscate illegal gains, and impose a fine of 1 million yuan based on Article 127 of the Law on the Protection of Minors, TMTPost App learned on Wednesday evening.

There is a large amount of pornographic information on the Tencent QQ platform's "Small World" section, and some users are inducing minors to engage in inappropriate social interactions, sexual enticement, and recruiting minors for game companionship in the comment section, which seriously infringes upon the legal rights and interests of minors and harms their physical and mental health, in violation of Article 80 of the Law on the Protection of Minors.

The cyberspace department will continue to focus on illegal and rule-breaking activities that seriously infringe upon the legal rights and interests of minors and harm their physical and mental health, increase law enforcement efforts and the frequency of public exposure of websites and platforms that repeatedly commit offenses, and strive to create a healthy and safe online environment for minors.

In response, Tencent told TMTPost App, "We sincerely accept the penalties and resolutely correct ourselves" and stated that they will firmly resist and combat harmful information.

The QQ Security Center issued an announcement stating that they have comprehensively rectified its QQ Small World and other functional sections in accordance with the requirements of the cyberspace department, and have intensified efforts to promote community governance through technical upgrades, platform reporting and better inspection and to severely crack down on verified harmful and malicious information.

QQ stated that it firmly opposes illegal and harmful information and has been continuously combating it through various means such as technological and manual inspection. The youth mode in the QQ Small World section strengthens the security of content through exclusive content pools and information filtering mechanisms. A healthy and clear content ecosystem is the foundation of development. QQ will comprehensively strengthen and upgrade the content security of its Small World and other feature sections from various dimensions such as mechanisms and technology, creating a clearer online environment.

TMTPost App has learned that QQ "Small World" is a new content community embedded in QQ.

Users can discover more interesting sections in "Small World" and directly follow users they are interested in. At the beginning of the launch, "Small World" users could publish up to 9 pictures or videos within 1 minute.

In April 2020, "Small World" started its internal testing, focusing on pictures and short videos.

Unlike Qzone, which can only see information posted by friends, "Small World" is open, and users can see "plaza-style" content. "Small World" provides two main content choice, "follow" and "recommendation", and users will also be recommended content posted by non-QQ friends, and they can follow these accounts and become their "fans" to continue following their content. Users can like, comment, and promote any content, and the content promoted by users will be displayed in the "promoted by" section of their user homepage.

After 5 months of internal testing, in September 2020, QQ further upgraded the strategic level of "Small World" by adding a first-level entry for "Small World" in the QQ interface, which is higher than Qzone. This move is also seen as Tencent's signal to further strengthen its presence in the short video field after Microview and Channels.

According to Tencent's Q2 financial report of 2023 released on August 16, the monthly active accounts of QQ's mobile terminals reached 571 million, a year-on-year increase of 0.4%, but a 4% decrease from the previous quarter.

As the second largest social platform of Tencent, the main users of QQ have gradually become younger.

In 2019, QQ released the "Post-00s on QQ: Social Behavior Report of Users born after 2000", which showed that the main user group driving QQ's growth is the Post-00s generation. As the natives of the mobile internet era, they have gradually begun to open the door to online socialization on QQ. The peak period for users born after 2000 to log in is during lunch breaks and after school.

Perhaps due to the combination of a young user base and an open community setting, QQ's "Small World" has become a breeding ground for the harmful information for minors.

In fact, this is not the first time that Tencent’s QQ has attracted regulatory attention due to prominent issues affecting the physical and mental health of minors.

On July 21, 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China launched the special action " Campaign for Cleaning up the Online Environment for Minors". It targeted platforms such as Kuaishou, Tencent QQ, Taobao, Sina Weibo, and Xiaohongshu for spreading child-oriented softcore pornographic emoticons, using minors’ short videos with sexual implication to attract users, and other issues. The cyberspace administration department lawfully questioned the responsible persons of the platforms, ordered them to rectify within a specified time limit, comprehensively clean up and dispose of related illegal and harmful information and accounts, and imposed fines on the platforms.

In order to further strengthen the protection of minors in the online environment and create a healthy and safe online environment, regulatory authorities have increased their focus on the regulation of the online environment for minors in recent years. Since 2020, the special action " Summer Campaign for Purifying the Online Environment for Minors" has been launched.

On June 27, 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued the notice regarding the special action, which shows that this year,  the focus will be the following seven areas of concern:

1. Hidden harmful content. First, information that spreads pornographic and vulgar, gambling, and superstitious content in the form of homophonic words, variant characters, emoticons, etc.; second, information that concentrates on displaying bloody and violent images involving minors through video editing, film and television adaptations, and anime adaptations; third, pornographic information that aims at attracting users through external links, floating windows, QR codes, account information, etc.; fourth, pornographic and violent content in voice and text search results in children's smart devices and third-party apps .

2.  Online bullying. First, using internet slang to insult and abuse minors; second, conducting cyber manhunt on minors and maliciously spreading bullying videos that disclose minors' privacy; third, using malicious photo editing, fabricating rumors, etc., to defame minors.

3. Remote sexual harassment. First, under the guise of "personal dating," "child star recruitment," "paid pictures," etc.,  minors are deceived or coerced to engage in online nude chats, obscene actions and provide nude photos and videos, etc.; second, minors may receive pornographic images and obscene language in online groups and private messages, etc.; third, vulgar and pornographic comments on accounts and article pages involving minors, inducing improper friendships or sexual enticement.

4. Online fraud. First, someone falsely sells or transfers concert tickets to minors in the name of "internal staff" to commit online fraud; second, someone lures minors to join group chats in the name of free game equipment, cashback, blind box, giveaways for fan, etc., and tricks them into making money transfers; third, someone deceives minors into providing social media accounts, payment passwords, etc. for online fraud activities.

5. Inappropriate content. First, videos depicting school-themed plots to stigmatize school images in a radical way, incite conflicts between teachers and students, and glorify behaviors like challenging teachers; second, videos that exaggerate parents' "oppression" and "exploitation" of their children, fabricates false family conflicts, and so on; third, content that induces smoking, drinking, getting tattoos, skipping classes, and other inappropriate behaviors; fourth, contents that promotes abnormal aesthetics through fake poses, advocating "bullying style" and "domestic violence makeup," and spreads content that promotes bullying and violence.

6. Internet addiction. First, some platforms induces minors to watch live broadcasts and short videos for a long time; second, they use algorithms to push addictive content to minors, forming an information cocoon; third, they induce minors to consume through entertainment functions such as online chat and virtual space decoration; fourth, they illegally provide minors with online game account rental and sales services, teaching minors to crack anti-addiction systems and teenage mode.

7. Risks of new technologies and applications. First, using technologies such as "AI face swapping," "AI drawing," and "AI one-click undressing" to generate explicit and pornographic images and videos involving minors; second, using so-called "self-destructing" private messaging apps to deceive minors into providing personal information and induce them to engage in illegal activities; third, using generative artificial intelligence technology to create and disseminate harmful information involving minors.

(This article is first published on the TMTPost App, Author | Li Chengcheng, Editor | Ma Jinnan)

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