It Built an Empire of GIFs, Buzzy News and Jokes. China Isn’t Amused.
It Built an Empire of GIFs, Buzzy News and Jokes. China Isn’t Amused. Photo People working at Bytedance’s headquarters in Beijing. China’s top media regulator on Tuesday ordered the start-up to shut down its app for sharing jokes and silly videos. Credit Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg BEIJING — A Chinese start-up that appears to have mastered the art of keeping people glued to their smartphones also has a knack for something else: drawing the ire of China’s censors.
The country’s top media regulator on Tuesday ordered the company, Bytedance, to shut down its app for sharing jokes and silly videos. Vulgar content on the Neihan Duanzi app had “caused strong dislike among internet users,” a brief notice from the State Administration of Radio and Television said. The company was told to clean up its other platforms, too.
The shutdown was only the latest blow for Bytedance, one of the world’s most successful technology start-ups. Just a day earlier, its flagship app, a popular news aggregator call..