When Weibo wanted to ban gay content
Weibo wanted to sweep gay content off the internet. After three days of protest under #IAmGay, the ban was history.
On 13 April 2018, Sina Weibo, one of China's largest social media platforms, published a brief notice. For three months, it said, it would clean up comics, games and videos depicting pornography, violence or homosexuality. It invoked the Cybersecurity Law and promised a "clear and harmonious" community. Tens of thousands of posts had already been deleted, it said.
The response came faster than the operators had expected. A popular LGBT account suspended its work, citing force majeure. Users then dug out a seven-year-old hashtag: #我是同性恋, "I am gay". Within a few days, it had been used hundreds of thousands of times. A mother from Shanghai wrote about her gay son and about how proud both of them were of their country. That was precisely why being lumped together with violence and pornography hurt. In Sichuan, activists offered hugs in the street, their eyes hidden behind rainbow masks.
Then a voice spoke up that hardly anyone had expected. The People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, warned that homosexuality should not be confused with vulgar content.
On 16 April, Weibo backed down. The campaign would no longer target homosexual content, only pornography and violence. It politely thanked users for their "discussion and suggestions".
It was a rare success in a country that had only decriminalised homosexuality in 1997 and removed it from the list of mental disorders in 2001. There was no apology, and censorship of queer content in film and television continued. Nevertheless, those days in April showed how many people in China no longer wanted to stay silent.