Research commissioned by the Telegraph shows that the number of posts on the hugely successful Twitter-like microblog may have fallen by as much as 70 per cent in the wake of an aggressive campaign by the Communist party to intimidate influential users.
..But that was the same month that the Communist party struck its first major blow against Weibo, requiring users to register their real names with the service.From that point, those wishing to criticise the Party had to do so without the comforting blanket of anonymity and users started to rein themselves in.
...Over the following months, the Party gradually tightened its censorship of the service, deleting the accounts of activists and instituting a 'five strikes-and-out rule’,which suspended the accounts of anyone posting five “sensitive” tweets for 48 hours. In June last year, however, the Party changed tack. To great effect, it began arresting hundreds of users posting “rumours” on Weibo...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10608245/China-kills-off-discussion-on-Weibo-after-internet-crackdown.html
