Online warning over graphic videos
Print Edition
INTERNET companies have been asked to examine and delete online videos featuring popular children’s characters in sexual, violent and terrorist scenarios.
According to a statement issued yesterday by China’s National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications, any company that broadcasts such videos will be punished.
Two offices of Guangzhou Yinjun Trade Co were closed by authorities in south China’s Guangdong Province on Monday for producing disturbing videos and translating subtitles of inappropriate foreign videos.
The move is a reaction to the controversial “Elsagate” scandal, public furor surrounding inappropriate cartoons believed to be aimed at children. Elsa is the main character of the Disney animation “Frozen,” and is prevalent in many disturbing cartoons on the video website YouTube.
The public can provide information on individuals or companies suspected of creating or broadcasting such content by calling 12390 or visiting shdf.gov.cn, the national office said.
Guangzhou Yinjun apologized on its official Weibo account: “We set the wrong example, to increase online video traffic by making videos that contained disturbing and inappropriate content not suitable for children.”
Guangdong police said no other companies in the province were known to be involved in making these harmful videos.
The action came after China launched a nationwide campaign on Monday to crack down on harmful online cartoons after an online article went viral on the country’s social media.
The English article, “A group of perverts are targeting kids on YouTube. I used to work for them,” was originally posted on social media website Reddit in November, stirring widespread concern among Chinese parents who read a Chinese translation of the article.
The matter was further complicated by the fact the story was originally posted on a section of Reddit called “nosleep,” a part of the website usually reserved for “original horror stories,” where it is explained that “suspension of disbelief is key.”
The article describes the author’s experience working in an unidentified animation firm that makes fake video clips of popular cartoon characters, such as Elsa, Spiderman and Peppa Pig, into scenes of violence, terrorism and sexuality to trick children into watching.
These animated videos, called “children’s evil classics” by Chinese media, have been uploaded onto major video portals in China.
The video uses tags to come under “parent-child” categories and once a child plays several of the videos, more are automatically recommended.
A woman, who gave her surname as Du, said her 5-year-old daughter spent hours watching cartoons on an iPad everyday.
“Most of the video characters are popular cartoon images. It is hard to detect the disturbing content if parents pay little attention to them,” Du said. “These videos are wicked, not only because they spread content full of violence, torture, abuse and sexuality to children, but because they try to rationalize the perverted acts by fitting them into everyday scenes like eating, sleeping or chatting.”
Chinese authorities responded quickly after Internet users first detected the problem.
The Beijing Integrated Law Enforcement on Cultural Market asked the video websites to purge themselves, carry out self-examination and clean up all the videos.
Search engines were also asked to block related keywords.
China’s online video firms such as Youku, iQiyi and Tencent Video have closed related accounts and deleted videos.
“These disturbing videos are very harmful for children. Cleaning up all these videos is urgent,” said Mao Yingmei, a political adviser in Beijing.
“In the stories, abortion, going through surgery, being beaten or offended are as normal as having lunch. So, children are encouraged either to endure torture or inflict abuse on others,” wrote a commentary on Weibo.
Mao said the video content related to children should be strictly regulated.
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