500 public WeChat accounts in China "punished" over plagiarism

Nearly 500 public accounts on Tencent's WeChat in China will be removed as part of a crackdown on plagiarism, the app developers have said.

In the recent three months, more than 32,000 plagiarised articles have been deleted and 497 public accounts punished, a statement said.

"Since February 3, public accounts on Tencent's WeChat app found plagiarising will be removed from the instant messaging service," the app developers said.

In the crackdown on pirates, the developers found that some public accounts abused the "originality declaration" function for copycat contents.

The developers have taken back the using permissions of this function of 29 public accounts, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.