Still, the forced deletion by the alliance marked the most high-profile instance yet of the police clamping down on online expression. As much of Hong Kong society has been transformed to more closely resemble the mainland, some fear the city’s digital spaces will be, too. In the mainland, Facebook, Twitter and many Western news outlets are blocked, and an army of censors works around the clock to remove any sensitive content.
Critics have also pointed to plans by the Hong Kong government to enact what it calls an anti-doxxing bill, though experts have called the language overly broad and open to abuse. Officials have also proposed targeting “fake news,” which many say could be used to further silence voices critical of the government.
On Thursday, the city’s largest pro-Beijing political party proposed following the central government’s lead by enacting stricter controls on video gaming, including enacting time limits for minors, requiring real-name registration and barring pornographic content.
“The hunting season for the open internet is starting, I think,” said Lokman Tsui, a Hong Kong-based fellow at Citizen Lab, a Canadian cybersecurity watchdog organization. “They were going after the media, going after the education institutions, the unions. But now it seems like it’s time to ‘fix the internet.’”
In particular, analysts noted that the order targeting the alliance was the first known instance of the police using the security law to force a group to delete posts itself, rather than going through service providers such as Wix.