Nowadays, the Internet has become a place people easily use to abuse, show off, attack others through cyber manhunting, spread rumors, advertise child pornography and violence, or invent false traffic by hiring digital ghostwriters.

In other words, damaging behavior and information pollute the environment of the cyberspace on a daily basis. For example, wildly popular iQiyi talent show Youth With You 3 has been suspended days before its season finale due to a voting promotion that led crazed fans to waste huge quantities of milk. Young fans went out of their way to hire people to open bottles of milk, just to spill them down the drain all because they sought to obtain and scan the QR codes printed on the inside of bottle caps to vote for their favorite contestants. The incident has been fiercely condemned across the Chinese society.

In response to the public backlash, the Cyberspace Administration of China has decided to induce a deep clean of the country's cyberspace by reproaching those in charge of online platforms violating the relevant laws and regulations and holding them accountable.

Although the administration has already carried out this type of "spring-cleaning" in the past, ensuring a clean and safe online environment is a matter of sustainability. Encouraged by the Internet Plus policies, China's current digital realm enjoys a rather lax development space, with various novel Internet products and platforms mushrooming. By late 2020, the number of Internet users in China reached 989 million, and the nation's various apps totaled around 3.45 million, with an Internet coverage rate of 70.4 percent. Consequently, it often happens that Internet regulators are incapable of tracking what is going on across the cyber vastness and a range of harmful and abnormal events keep popping up from time to time.

After one such cyberspace clean-up effort, by the end of 2020, the total number of apps was 220,000 fewer than that of 2019, a drop of 6 percent year on year. However, new problems keep cropping up, and regulators consistently have to take swift action to sweep up the room from time to time in keeping with the latest developments. This is actually a flexible method to maintain a clean cyberspace, as it does not seek to restrict the growth of the Internet industry at large by limiting it within certain frameworks. The tactics applied merely intend to address and correct the various problems in the process of the digital industry's expansion. Mobile payments are one typical example of the fruits borne by "free-range" apps.

Nevertheless, doubts regarding the cleaning efforts linger, with criticasters citing that they will undermine the freedom of the Internet. The critics seem to neglect the fact that online content and apps are mainly taken down due to their potentially dangerous nature. Nowadays, the Internet increasingly infiltrates the everyday life of ordinary people, having a tangible impact, and thus the digital realm should by no means be treated as an area free of all rules and regulations. Cleaning up the cyberspace is in essence the same as inflicting legal punishment on violations and crimes in real life.

Instead of fretting over the clean-up efforts, more attention should focus on the actual harm done by websites and apps not promptly deleted as they manage to fly under the radar. In this sense, it's necessary for netizens to actively involve themselves in the clean-up efforts by reporting illegal online information and activities to regulators. Furthermore, they can contribute their individual insights on how to create a healthy and vibrant digital environment. Not only will this help curb online malpractices, but also urge regulators to improve their administrative means.

It is well-known that in cyberspace, simply to rely on regulators to crack down on crimes and harmful information floating around is far from enough. It is essential to have in place a supervisory network that involves the vast majority of Internet users. When users stop complaining about harmful information or falling victim to cyberattacks, and start taking action to expose such falsehoods and abusive actions, only then are government regulations likely to really become more effective. BR

(Print Edition Title: Cyberspace Cleanup)

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon

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