No distorting of history

Chinese authorities shut down 133 WeChat accounts recently for distorting the history of the Party and the State in the information they provided for their subscribers.

In response to people's complaints and reports, authorities shut down 133 WeChat accounts recently for distorting the history of the Party and the State in the information they provided for their subscribers.

China has the longest well-recorded history in the world, while its people like drawing lessons from the past as guidance into the future. But if the stories are riddled with false and fabricated information, they will mislead and distort the outlooks of those who take it to be true, said an article on People's Daily.

The reason these accounts managed to attract so many subscribers so quickly is that they took advantage of people's curiosity about history, and made a good use of the new media to spread their well-plotted stories. In the gossiping that results, stories about the past gradually evolve into historical facts, and then finally become history.

The accounts' owners profit from their fast growing popularity, and choose to remain blind to the harm their distorted histories do to their subscribers, especially young people, the main users of WeChat, whose number was nearly 450 million in China at the end of last year.

WeChat owner and operator Shenzhen-based Tencent Inc should also take the blame. The company is responsible for the public platform it creates, and should clean up the any false information before the State is forced to take action.

Users can report any malpractice or illegal information they find on the public accounts to the WeChat operator through a function button provided in the software, and they can also directly call the Internet administration authorities to report the problems they find in cyberspace.

An easy way to overthrow a regime is to subvert its history. Information "pollution", such as that pedaled by these WeChat accounts, must be cleansed in a timely manner.