Crypto Added to China’s Blacklist of Short Videos Deemed Taboo

Short videos about cryptocurrency are now banned as part of China’s updated blacklist of taboo subjects that include topics like showing sexual content, ridiculing the government, provoking dogmatism, discussing fascism, and anything that questions the country’s ideology, Bitcoin.com reported.

The blacklist of 100 banned topics of short online videos was handed down by the China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA), according to the report.

Updated rules also point to bans on videos that depict drug use, gambling, violence, gangs, criminal activity, mental abuse and “non-mainstream views of marriage and love,” the report stated.

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Many of the banned topics were part of the CNSA’s earlier blacklist but new areas were added, most strikingly cryptocurrency, according to the report. Earlier this year, China started prohibiting crypto mining in the country, and four years ago, it banned crypto trading and fundraising through coin offerings.

Now, videos that show or in any way inspire virtual currency mining, trading or speculation are banned online and on social media apps, the report stated. The move came about in part following President Xi Jinping’s goal for carbon neutrality in the country sometime around 2060. That decision uprooted crypto miners in China, sending them to regions more open-minded to the practice.

Read also: China’s Crypto Ban Shutters Ethereum Miner SparkPool

“‘Other violation of laws, regulations, social public order and good customs’ could ostensibly be construed as effectively untying the hands of Chinese regulators to censor almost any clip published online,” the order stated, per the report.

Failure to comply with the rules could result in fines. The microblogging social media giant Weibo, for example, was penalized several times this year for failure to comply fast enough or effectively enough, CNN reported.

Weibo was hit with a $470,000 penalty last week for repeatedly posting content deemed illegal. The company this year was fined 44 times totaling $2.2 million, the report stated.