Weibo reverses ban on gay content after tens of thousands come out and protest
When a protest actually works
After announcing a ban on homosexual content, Sina Weibo has been forced to reverse course in the wake of that ban being met with protests from tens of thousands of web users, who rallied around the viral hashtag: #iamgay.
In a surprise announcement last Friday evening, Weibo, which is often called “China’s Twitter,” declared that over the next three months it would conduct a “clean-up campaign,” targeting images, videos, text, and cartoons that related to pornography, violence, and homosexuality, in order to ensure a “clean and harmonious” online environment.
That announcement was met with shock and disgust by Weibo’s sizeable LGBT community. Over the weekend, tens of thousands protested the move, employing hashtags like #iamgay, #iamgaynotapervert, and #scumbagsinahelloiamgay.
While coming out against the ban, many also included photos of themselves with their partners or with gay family members. Here are just a few of those photos:
And a few more:
The most popular of these posts came from Chinese LGBT activist Pu Chunmei, who uploaded photos of herself with her gay son. In her post, Pu wrote that she and her son were proud to be Chinese, but could not stand for this discriminatory attack on minorities.
In another popular post, a Weibo user decided that now was the perfect time to reupload a video of a social experiment featuring gay individuals standing blindfolded in the street in China with their arms out and wearing a shirt that reads: “I am gay, would you hug me?”
Meanwhile, in Nanjing, a group actually managed to turn a marathon into a gay pride parade in protest of Weibo’s decision, a rare sight in China.
While “homosexuality” became the most censored term on Weibo over the weekend and the “#iamgay” hashtag was taken down, many of these pro-LGBT posts were kept up. It’s not clear if censors were unable to cope with the deluge of posts, or if they had already decided to admit defeat.
On Monday, Sina Weibo issued an addendum to its announcement, declaring that its campaign would not target homosexual content, focusing instead on pornography and violence, and thanking users for their feedback.
Weibo’s quick backtrack was cheered by netizens, who challenged the company to reopen comments on the original announcement thread if they really did appreciate their feedback so much. One Weibo user simply commented “#lovewins.”
China has long banned depictions of homosexuality in the media. Last year, LGBT content was banned from online videos, falling into the category of “abnormal sexual behavior,” just as it had the year before when homosexuality was banned from television shows in China.
In enacting its own ban, Sina Weibo said that it was following these official guidelines against “vulgar” content — though, it’s not clear why the social media network decided to do so only now.
But the move seems likely to have been made in order to get on regulators’ good side, as China has launched yet another crackdown on online content with the principal victim being the popular news app Toutiao. Last week, Toutiao CEO Zhang Yiming issued a rather remarkable apology for hosting vulgar content and violating socialist core values.
