China social media cracks down on gambling URLs

China’s version of Twitter is altering its terms of service in a bid to minimize users’ ability to promote unauthorized gambling websites.

On Wednesday, Chinese social media giant Sina Weibo announced plans to implement “an external chain whitelist mechanism” intended to “block malicious activities” that some users were promoting via the microblogging app.

The change, which will be launched early next month, involves limiting access to the platform’s free URL shortening service, which allows users to hide the ultimate destination of the external links they include in their messages.

Come August, the link-shortening service will remain free for “government, news and certified enterprise websites.” Other websites will need to apply for inclusion in Weibo’s whitelist, and the company claimed that messages promoting websites not accepted for this whitelist will “no longer support jumping.”