Victory for LGBTQ Community in China After Online Censorship Decision

A Chinese social media titan has today changed their mind about a decision to censor all gay content on their platform in an effort to 'clean up' cyberspace.

Sina Weibo is an online platform colloquially dubbed "China's Twitter," and home to almost 400 million active users. On Friday, they'd announced they would be removing all gay-themed content, including cartoons, videos, pornography, and violent material, in order to comply with Chinese government regulation.

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The decision had come as part of President Xi Jinping's promise to tighten social media regulation in an effort to make a 'clean cyberspace.' Other types of content that had been affected by the cleanup include feminist voices and hip hop music.

But this morning marked a reversal in Sina Weibo's decision. While pornography and violent content will still be blocked, gay media will not be removed from the site, after intense backlash from users.

"Sina Weibo's original decision simply made no sense--why link homosexuality with other illegal activities?" said Chinese LGBT activist Xiaogang Wei in CNN's report. "They targeted the entire LGBT community in that notice. We must pressure these companies and show them it's not easy to discriminate against an entire community--no matter who orders them to do it."

It is not a crime to be homosexual in China and the sexual orientation was taken off of China's official list of mental disorders in 2001.