WeChat shuts Bloomberg's financial news account over regulation violation

As China controls the internet companies under toughened laws, social media platform WeChat has shut down a Bloomberg social media account, accusing it of violating country's regulations on online public accounts, the media reported on Friday.

Tencent-owned WeChat said it had received "complaints" about Bloomberg's "Daybreak" account, which posts global market updates, reports South China Morning Post.

The account, active since January 2021, has breached Chinese regulations, the Chinese platform said.

"All content has been blocked and the account has been suspended," the message read on the blocked account, along with a link to the regulations issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China.

The Bloomberg account posted its last financial update last week.

It is still unclear what content had triggered the account's closure.

Tencent and Bloomberg did not comment on the development.

Earlier this year, the public accounts of Hong Hao, the former head of research at Bocom International Holdings and an outspoken economist, were removed from both WeChat and Twitter-like Weibo.

Hong posted on Twitter that shutting 'Daybreak' account could make "the mainland market increasingly misinformed and mispriced".

With crackdowns on Internet companies, China has further tightened mobile app development rules with stricter requirements for content and data protection.

"With the rapid development and wider use of mobile apps, new situations and problems continue to emerge, which require (the rules) to be revised and improved to adapt to new developments," the Cyberspace Administration of China said last month.

China will soon establish a hierarchical data classification management and protection system.

--IANS

na/vd