Chinese Baidu is distancing itself from cryptocurrencies amid China’s crackdown. The search giant is planning to ban crypto-related forum topics on Baidu Tieba, the firm’s Reddit-like online community business.
“The company has toughened its scrutiny over digital currency and will not allow sub-forums under this theme, based on relevant rules and regulations,” the report said, citing an anonymous source close to the firm.
Baidu Tieba’s representative has confirmed that “the company will operate and manage its forum business based on existing Chinese laws and regulations” but did not give specific comment on crypto-related discussions.
Currently, the “virtual currency” and “digital currency” sub-forums is unavailable, searching for thise keywords triggers a statement saying: “This forum is temporarily closed due to relevant laws, regulations, and policies.”
According to Baidu Tieba representative, these sub-forums were suspected of distributing information about ICOs and cryptocurrency speculation.
As a reminder, last week Chinese WeChat, the messenger app owned by Tencent, banned Blockchain and cryptocurrency related media accounts. According to WeChat, some public accounts breached of the service’s “Interim Provisions on the Development of Public Information Services for Instant Messaging Tools” terms, that had been introduced by the Cyberspace Administration of China on August 7.
