China’s micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo on Monday retracted its decision to remove gay content after users accused it of drawing parallels between homosexuality and pornography, Reuters reported. On Friday, Weibo, which is considered the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, had announced that it would remove all pornographic, violent or gay videos and cartoons.
Several users criticised the decision with hashtags on the platform, open letters and even calls threatening to dump the company’s shares. On Monday, the firm said the ban would no longer include gay content.
The company had said the three-month campaign aimed to “further make a clean and harmonious community environment” and is “based on laws and regulations, such as the Cyber Security Law”, state-run People’s Daily said.
The news agency said the firm did not comment on whether its decision to ban homosexual content was based on a government directive or a step in self-censorship.
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