Beijing is threatening to shutter the news service of Sina Weibo, which it finds not censoring enough news that it publishes and not filtering false information.

On Friday, officials of Sina Corp. met with national- and city-level officers of the Cyberspace Administration of China to tackle complaints from Internet users over content found in various Sina platforms, reports Wall Street Journal.

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The agency has been tightening control over China's 649 million netizens in the past few months. Users of various services were required in February to register their real names with service providers and were ordered to stop posting information that violates national interest

However, the tighter control negatively impacts the business of online companies since unrestricted and uncensored online discussions are one of the attractions to users. Community Party officials have complained of infiltration of western ideas through the online discussions.

The Administration disclosed that it received 6,038 complaints against Sina in 2015, of which 1,227 were made in April. Sina topped the number of complaints among news websites based in China.

Among the complaints are that the news is used to spread rumors, to provide data about violent terrorism, obscenity, pornography, fraud and to propagate heresy or religious groups disapproved by the central government such as the Falun Gong.

Some complained of distortion of news facts, breaching morality and hyping some news. However, the Administration did not provide specific examples of news items that readers allegedly complained about.

The regulator ordered Sina to correct the situation. It warned the company that if despite making changes, more complaints arise, it would impose more severe punishment for Sina, which could possibly include suspension of its online news portal.

According to the report, Sina promised to be stricter in censoring content.

As more Chinese went online, social media in China became a direct challenge to the state media's monopoly of news in the country, observes Tech.first.post.com.

The Administration has also provided detailed rules to regulate the contents of microblogging site Sina Weibo, which is the version of Twitter in China.

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