Should the Government Shut Up Online Influencers Who Lack Professional Credentials?

​In this globalized world, you can enjoy Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors in Beijing. But if you are a Chinese online influencer, you had better not ignore the 31 behaviors that have just been banned by the People’s Republic of China.

The new regulations make it clear the state will no longer tolerate (as if it ever did) statements or content deemed “injurious to the reputation” of the Chinese Communist Party or socialism. Nor can Chinese netizens use AI to make deepfake satires ridiculing party or state leaders.

This is just the latest crackdown on speech in China. In 2018 the regime banned Winnie-the-Pooh when Beijing realized to its dismay that the jowly, chubby cartoon bear had become an online meme representing the quite-abundant frame of China’s dictator, Xi Jinping. Now, thanks to this latest round of speech restrictions, Chinese netizens will be shielded from AI images of the Beloved Leader kissing Putin on the lips or being dragged away under arrest.

A New Chinese Rule with an American Echo

Democracies can tolerate every manner of disrespect for our leaders. Lately, our leaders themselves have posted digital displays of disrespect toward each other (not to mention posts in supremely bad taste). With so many digital haymakers being tossed around, we can rest easy that the explicit restrictions of the Chinese government are unlikely to be adopted here.
But another section of Beijing’s new regulations gives us pause.

• The 18-point guideline issued by the Chinese government requires online influencers to have formal “qualifications” – such as the appropriate college degree – to be eligible to comment on law, finance, medicine, and education. Tracy Qu of The South China Morning Post reports that “live-streamers are also forbidden from showing an extravagant lifestyle, such as displaying luxury products and cash.”

Here at home, the U.S. government in recent years has pressured social media companies to deplatform “disinformation” – often just iconoclastic views – that later turn out to be correct. Witness how the consensus opinion that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan, China, lab was a conspiracy theory – right up until both the directors of the FBI and the CIA told Congress that the virus was more likely than not of artificial origin.

A Bipartisan Appetite for Speech Regulation

• The Federal Trade Commission requires influencers to disclose any payments or free products they’ve received for an endorsement of a product. It is easy to imagine that Washington regulators will one day want to attach a requirement for professional expertise to comment on complicated topics.

 

• A bipartisan bill introduced in the last Congress by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham would create a new independent regulator with authority to work with the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to regulate the behavior of large, online social media platforms.

The intent is to guard Americans’ privacy, protect children, and strengthen national security. Yet it is easy to imagine that such a powerful internet regulatory agency would soon get Washington, D.C., back into the business of regulating content.
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We can frown on China’s crackdown on influencers, but don’t be so smug as to think it can never happen here. Censorship usually arrives not in jackboots, but with a clipboard and a promise that it’s “for your safety.”

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