China: CAC announced blocking of websites following investigations into several coordinated online manipulation networks

On 3 January 2025, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued an interim ruling concerning various investigations into coordinated online manipulation networks in 2024. The investigations revealed issues such as fake reviews, inflated traffic, manipulated rankings and increased recruitment efforts by such networks. The CAC addressed these concerns by disabling illegitimate websites and platforms, removing unlawful content, and addressing non-compliant accounts and merchant stores. Furthermore, the CAC instructed platforms to increase their technical defences, block bots and intercept software used by coordinated online manipulation networks.