BEIJING — Chen Shaojie, founder and CEO of DouYu — China’s leading video streaming platform — is being held by Chinese authorities over supposed “pornographic content” on the site.
Chen’s whereabouts had been a mistery for weeks until Monday, when anonymous sources unofficially told the Chinese press that he was being held somewhere in the country’s labyrinthine prison system.
A few months ago, China’s all-powerful internet watchdog, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission (aka, Cyberspace Administration of China, or CAC), launched an on-site inspection of the DouYu’s local subsidiary in the Hubei province “to address ‘serious’ problems, including pornography,” the English-language South China Morning Post reported.
DouYu — a massive, China-based analog to YouTube — is the largest of its kind in the country, boasting 163.6 million monthly active users before the pandemic and outnumbering platforms by competitors such as DouYin, the flagship product by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.
Several weeks ago, following the Hubei branch inspection, Chen had “vanished from sight and could neither be contacted nor located by his colleagues,” local news reported.
DouYu told the press “its operations remain normal, but did not comment on its missing chief executive.”
Reports about Chen, the tech mogul behind the Tencent Holdings-backed DouYu International Holdings, confirm he is being held “incommunicado” by Chinese authorities.
“When someone becomes incommunicado in mainland China, it typically means that the person has either been taken away by authorities for an inquiry or ‘to assist in an investigation,’” the South China Morning Post explained. “In Chen’s case, no Chinese authority has provided any information about his disappearance.”
Chen’s last public appearance was in August, during DouYu’s second-quarter results conference call.
‘Providing Easy Access to Pornography’
Another tech mogul, China Renaissance Holdings chairman Bao Fan was seized by authorities earlier this year in an unspecified investigation. “Authorities have not provided further details about Bao’s situation,” the South China Morning Post offered.
Chen’s disappearance comes several months after China’s internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), launched a rare on-site inspection of DouYu’s local arm in central Hubei province to address “serious” problems related to the platform, including pornography and other vulgar content.
CAC did not release information about the results of the inspection or subsequent action as part of rectification measures.
The current case echoes a 2016 investigation, when video streaming pioneer Wang Xin, “was sentenced to a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence and fined one million yuan by the Beijing Haidian District People’s Court, which found him guilty of ‘distributing obscene materials for personal gain.’”
The government charged Wang’s with “providing easy access to pornography” through his platform.
The weaponization of obscenity laws against tech companies and moguls over third party content published in platforms, and against other politically controversial individuals, has been routine in totalitarian regimes worldwide.
In the U.S., Section 230 shields tech companies from liability over third party content, and discourages the abuse by the State of sensational sex-related accusations to target companies and individuals.