PEOPLE who publish false alarms on natural disasters, police notices or deliberately spread rumors on the Internet will be held for up to three years in prison if the spread of the false information has disturbed social order. Those whose rumor mongering causes serious consequences can be put behind bars for three to seven years.

    The punishments have been written into an amendment to the Criminal Law, which will take effect Nov. 1.

    The regulation will affect WeChat, a messaging service with close to 400 million active users that is one of China’s most popular apps, Weibo and other online forums.

    China began in 2013 to implement a 10-clause judicial interpretation, which defines what kind of online behavior could be regarded as “fabricating facts to slander others” and what could be regarded as “serious” violations. It rules that people face defamation charges if online rumors they post are viewed by more than 5,000 netizens or retweeted more than 500 times.

    Since the Ministry of Public Security’s crackdown on rumormongers online in 2013, a local court in Beijing gave the first ruling on an Internet rumormonger in April last year.

    A 30-year-old native from Hunan Province, Qin Zhihui, better known by his online alias, Qin Huohuo, who defamed celebrities and the government, was given a three-year jail term for defamation and disturbing public order.

    Police said Qin had created and spread nearly 3,000 rumors online since 2010 on social media services.

    According to a report issued by China Internet Network Information Center in 2014, China has 490 million consumers of online news, 270 million people using microblogs, and 277 million social network users.

    Some 59 percent of fake news items in 2014 originated on Sina Weibo, while rumors on WeChat accounted for 7 percent, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. (SD-Agencies)