Weibo services \'punished\' for Beijing coup rumors, comments temporarily disabled

For a rustic who doesn't really do April Fools' Day, China means business when it lays the smackdown on its weibo services. Here's the background story: a few week ago there has been a rumor at the Chinese web a few military coup on one of many main streets in Beijing, and coincidentally i used to be on the town round the time (for the Windows Phone launch). Funnily enough, I wasn't familiar with this in any respect until my taxi driver in Hong Kong asked me about my visit, as he claimed that the passenger he picked up beforehand was actually a Chinese military officer who had several intense phone calls about said coup.

But obviously, nothing actually happened. In truth, the guards at Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City were pretty relaxed after I visited on that very day. As for the rumormongers, the Chinese government announced through Xinhua that 16 websites had been shut down and 6 people was detained, while local microblogging platforms Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo were "criticized and punished accordingly," though it didn't elaborate at the details. All we all know is that comments under each weibo post are actually disabled until local time 8pm on April 3rd, within which these two companies can, of their own words, freshen up the mess. Well, at the very least we now know where to attract the road for China's April Fools'.

From WhatNewsToday.net

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