China’s government wants to control what usernames you can pick on the web

China’s government has long been interested in ensuring that people’s online personas are connected to their actual identity. Its efforts to enforce real-name registration go back years. But real-name registration has not meant that users’ choice of username is restricted. It has simply meant that behind that username, there had to be a real identity that government agents could access in case the account was used for law-breaking. Publicly, real-name registered accounts could use whatever display username they wanted.

Last week, though, China’s government announced that it wants a hand in users’ public usernames, too. According to the China Daily, along with the latest real-name requirements, regulations requiring that usernames themselves be censored will take effect on March 1.

No longer allowed are usernames that involve the names of celebrities, government agencies, or government officials, including foreign ones. Usernames like “Obama,” for example, will no longer be permitted on Chinese sites. Unsurprisingly also banned are “nicknames that appear to advertise cults or pornography, or that damage State security,” according to the China Daily.

Although the rules are ostensibly intended to prevent people from impersonating celebrities or government officials online, it seems likely that they will also be used to crack down on satirical accounts, especially those that make the government look bad.

As is usually the case with such edicts from the government, the burden of enforcing China’s new username rules will fall to internet companies themselves, so it remains to be seen how well anything will be enforced. Many Chinese internet companies made only a halfhearted effort to implement real-name registration at first (in fact Sina even admitted to investors it wasn’t trying hard to implement the system). It’s possible that they’ll drag their feet with these rules too, especially if it turns out the changes will affect a significant number of users.

A cursory glance suggests that they will definitely affect a few. On Sina Weibo, for example, there are several accounts with more than 10,000 followers that use “Obama” in their usernames. There are also quite a few satirical Kim Jong Un accounts. All these, along with many others, will apparently be illegal when the new regulations take effect next month.

See: A brief history of China’s campaign to enforce real-name registration online