Brain King becomes first WeChat mini program banned by regulators for “distorting history”

Brain King (大脑王者), a popular quiz-like social game, became the first WeChat mini program to get a taste of the long arm of Chinese regulators. On Tuesday night, the mini program was suspended. Tencent’s WeChat team announced that Brain King violated rules for managing public information services on IM platforms and urged mini programs to rectify themselves, The Paper is reporting (in Chinese).

Last week, WeChat announced that it will regulate user’s “information dissemination behavior” and attempts to conduct marketing activities by distorting China and CCP history. Offences include misleading titles and distorting historical information to attract readers’ attention to marketing content. This last issue was likely what landed Brain King in hot water.

Brain King is a quiz game that enables two competitors to guess the right answer in the shortest amount of time. Here are some of the questions that irked Chinese regulators.

What you get

Full access to all premium content and our full archives

Members'-only newsletters

Preferential access and discounts to all TechNode events

Direct access to the TechNode newsroom