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'Diablo Immortal' delayed indefinitely in China just before its planned release date
Publisher NetEase may have run afoul of censors after a viral Weibo post that seemingly referenced President Xi Jinping.
Tesla takes to Chinese social media to ease local spying fears
Tesla is using its Chinese social media page to assuage local spying fears after its cars were banned from the country's military facilities and select state-owned companies.
Robert Downey, Jr. shifts his smartphone allegiance to OnePlus
Apparently, lifting a 49-pound block of cement by the OnePlus 7 Pro's pop-up camera wasn't the only publicity stunt the company has planned for its new phones. Today, Robert Downey, Jr. shared a photo of himself holding a 7 Pro and standing in front of a McLaren on his Weibo page. "Good to work with a technology brand I can vibe with," he wrote.
Samsung reconsiders its fake Supreme collaboration in China
Samsung caused controversy at the Chinese launch event of the Galaxy A8 earlier this week, when it announced it would be partnering with fashion brand Supreme for some kind of tech x streetwear collaboration (exactly what wasn't specified). The catch though, was that the partnership didn't involve the authentic New York Supreme label, but rather Supreme Italia -- a "legal fake" in Italy that manages to exist through a bunch of intellectual property law loopholes.
HBO's website is apparently blocked in China thanks to John Oliver
According to a report from The New York Times, the HBO website has been blocked in China. The crackdown apparently came in response to John Oliver mocking president Xi Jinping on Last Week Tonight. Originally noticed by internet watchdog Greatfire.org, the block went into effect on June 22nd and currently appears to be at 83 percent across the country.
Report reveals the extent of China's tech sexism problem
Chinese tech companies like Baidu and Alibaba have been using blatant sexism to attract job candidates and advertising jobs for "men only," Human Rights Watch (HRW) has reported. "Major companies like Alibaba have published recruitment ads promising applicants 'beautiful girls' as co-workers," said HRW China Director Sophie Richardson. Furthermore, Chinese authorities have not been enforcing laws that prohibit workplace gender discrimination, it adds.
Weibo reverses planned purge of LGBT content
Last Friday, China's social network Weibo said it had plans to remove violent and gay-themed content on its platform in order to comply with strict new Chinese cybersecurity regulations. Now, however, after many users of the Twitter-like system protested the removal of LGBT content, the company has relented, saying that the main purpose of its cleanup efforts is to remove pornographic, violent and gory content, not homosexuality.
China's Weibo is purging violent and gay-themed content
Popular Chinese social network Weibo is removing violent and gay-themed content to comply with China's new cybersecurity regulations. The Twitter-like platform has announced that it's doing a three-month "clean-up campaign," which will mainly target "manga (Japanese comics) and videos with pornographic implications, promoting violence or (related to) homosexuality," as well as games with violent content like Grand Theft Auto.
The missing trade war against China’s digital protectionism
Earlier this summer, the Trump administration took its first concrete step toward what some think could turn into an all-out trade war with China. The product that it put an import tax on? Aluminum foil. Like the Obama administration, which took action against China's subsidies to auto parts manufacturers and withholding of rare earth exports that are crucial to tech manufacturing, Trump seems focused on physical goods. But China's main trade barrier against the US isn't on manufactured or raw goods; rather, it targets Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the bulk of the multi-billion-dollar, fast-growing tech sector. Many of these companies have been facing market access issues in China for years due to the blocking or censoring of their digital content or tools, likely costing them billions in potential revenue.
China targets livestreaming in latest censorship crackdown
China just shut down livestreaming on three major media platforms -- Weibo, the news site iFeng and the video website ACFUN. China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television sent notices to the companies ordering them to cease all video and audio livestreaming, saying they were, "not in line with national audiovisual regulations and propagating negative speech."
China bans news sites from using social media as a source
The Cyberspace Administration of China put national news outlets on notice this weekend, warning them not to base reports on social media sources without strict verification of the facts. The statement came less than a week after the appointment of a new head of the regulatory body, and cites various, apparently bogus stories published off the back of chatter on popular services like Weibo and WeChat. "It is forbidden to use hearsay to create news or use conjecture and imagination to distort the facts," a translation of the warning reads.
China's Twitter will expand text limit to 2,000 characters
China's version of Twitter, Sina Weibo, also plans to expand its messages' capacity from 140 characters to 2,000. Unlike its American counterpart that's still thinking about it, though, Weibo's already made up its mind. The microblogging service will launch its expanded messages on January 28th to a small group of beta testers. Everyone else -- that is, all 500 million users -- will be able to post long letters/thoughts/diatribes by February 28th.
China wants you to use your real name on social media
Social media's reputation for usurping the political classes means that it terrifies most some world leaders. That's probably the reasoning behind China's decision to pass a law mandating that users of internet-based communication services like IMs and social media must use their real name, or else. According to the state-run Xinhua News, users will now sign up to a service like WeChat, but won't gain access until they pass a background check. A spokesperson for the State Internet Information Office (SIIO) claims that "a few people" are using online chat services to spread dissent, slanders, rumors, terrorism, violence and pornography, which they claim is harming the overall health of China's leaders online population.
Report: This is what iOS 8 looks like, at least right now
Apple's next version of its mobile operating system, iOS 8, looks an awful lot like the iOS you've already got on your iDevice. At least that's according to screens leaked on Chinese microblog site Weibo and lent credence by veritable Apple site 9to5Mac, which show what is supposedly iOS 8 in action. Yes, square icons with rounded edges are back, but that design is wrapped around some new entrants in the app world: TextEdit, Preview and Tips. It's easy to guess what the first one might be (a potential replacement for the Notes app), but Preview? Given the icon's distinct resemblance to the application of the same name in OS X, we're guessing this serves a similar function: viewing documents and PDFs. As for Tips? Well, that's probably just a solution for introducing new users.
Study finds that anger spreads further than joy on social networks
Want to get your message heard on a social network? Try raging about it. China's Beihang University has published a study of Sina Weibo users which suggests that anger-fueled online posts have more of an influence than those reflecting other emotions. During the research period, a typical bitter comment would affect posts three degrees removed from the original; joy had a muted impact, while disgust and sadness hardly got any traction. Don't be too quick to lament the human condition, though. As researchers note, many of the angry posts were triggered by politics in Weibo's native China. There's a chance that internet denizens on other social networks have a rosier outlook on life. [Image credit: Wayne Marshall, Flickr]
Verizon Lumia 1520 variant leaked in China, teases 20MP PureView camera and Zeiss lens
An oversized smartphone with Zeiss optics and PureView camera technology? We wouldn't expect anything less from Nokia, but it's nice to see the rumors roll in, all the same. Noted Weibo leaker Houdabao has managed to get his hands on a large Lumia device with a PureView 20-megapixel camera, Zeiss optics and Verizon branding. The post describes the devices as a "big big Windows Phone," which sounds an awful lot like the rumored Lumia 1520. The speakers and camera flash are in slightly different locations than the leaked image we saw earlier this month, but we're willing to chalk that up to carrier variations. Nokia hasn't said anything official just yet, but rumors suggest that the device will be officially unveiled later this month.
Tencent ups the ante, offers users 10TB of free cloud storage in promotion
If you thought that the free storage that's offered by Microsoft, Google and others were generous, then you've never been to China. Tencent, in an attempt to crawl past local rivals Baidu and Weibo, is offering customers a whopping 10 Terabytes of space on its Weiyun cloud storage service. All users need to do is sign up with the company, offer up their QQ account number, and download the Weiyun mobile app -- which bags 'em an instant 1TB, with the allowance gradually increasing to 10TB the more files they upload. The only downside for us, naturally, is that the promotion does make SkyDrive's 25GB seem a bit stingy by comparison.
Hell freezes over: Sina Weibo now lets you post to Facebook
For some strange reason, Sina Weibo's always required folks to log in to view some of its posts, but now there's more incentive for those who've yet to open a Weibo account. Announced yesterday, the website claims to be the first Chinese social networking platform to connect with Facebook -- the irony being the latter is still blocked in China, plus Tencent's WeChat already beat Weibo on this one. Anyhow, both new and existing overseas users (including those from Taiwan and Hong Kong) can now register their Facebook accounts on Weibo, thus letting them post Weibo messages to the former simultaneously. Understandably, it doesn't work the other way round, but this should still somewhat help Weibo expand its user base of over 530 million. As you can see in the above screenshots, this author took the new feature for a test drive and could only forward text-only Weibo posts to Facebook. That said, Sina's press release states that through Facebook's Graph API, Weibo users will eventually be able to also share images, videos, TV shows, music and mobile location to Zuckerberg World. For now, this Facebook integration is only available on the web client, but the Android and iOS clients will soon receive it as well. We've reached out to Sina to see what's up with the Windows Phone version, so stay tuned.
Chinese smear campaign against Apple backfires badly
China Central Television recently singled out Apple for its shoddy products and poor customer service in a three-hour documentary. According to M.I.C. Gadget, a gaffe by a celebrity may have exposed this film as nothing but propaganda. The conspiracy started when Taiwanese-American celebrity Peter Ho and other influencers used Chinese social network Weibo to post negative comments about Apple during the TV broadcast. The post by Ho caught they eye of readers who noticed the unusual phrase, "To be posted at around 8:20," appended at the end. This phrase doesn't fit in with Ho's accusation against Apple and suggests he accidentally pasted both text and instructions provided to him by someone else. Two hours later, Ho deleted the post and claimed someone hacked his account. Ironically, M.I.C. Gadget points out that most of the people posting negative comments against Apple were using Apple devices to decry the evil ways of the Cupertino company. You can read more about the controversy surrounding these Weibo posts and the China Central Television report in the article on M.I.C. Gadget's website.
ZTE's Nubia Z5 turns to face the camera in 'leaked' photo
We already got a look at the rear of the latest China-bound smartphone from ZTE, but now the Nubia Z5 has turned around to shown us its face. The image was apparently "leaked" on Chinese social network Weibo by an enthusiastic PR manager at the firm. Things are still pretty sparse on the specification front, but -- all things going according to plan -- that 5-inch screen and italian design will be hiding quad-core internals and at least 13 megapixels of camera power. With the official reveal tipped for next week, though, it shouldn't be too long until we're seeing a whole lot more of it. Leaked or otherwise.
