Microsoft’s professional networking site LinkedIn, one of the few US social networks available to mainland Chinese users, is pausing new member registrations in the country as the company works to ensure it remains in compliance with national law.
“We’re a global platform with an obligation to respect the laws that apply to us, including adhering to Chinese government regulations for our localised version of LinkedIn in China,” Microsoft stated according to The Wall Street Journal.
LinkedIn, which entered China in 2014, is a rare example of a US social network that remains accessible within the country, where a government-built firewall blocks nearly all of the platform’s popular peers, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and, most recently, the live-audio chat app Clubhouse.
Instead, China has cultivated its own social media ecosystem consisting of the likes of microblogging site Weibo and messaging app WeChat for its more than 900 million internet users. Home-grown professional networking platforms such as Maimai – LinkedIn’s biggest rival in China – have also attracted a considerable number of users.
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