The Tuscan textile city of Prato, home to thousands of fashion shops and warehouses and one of the most concentrated Chinese populations in Europe, can now boast formal links to China’s growing national network of local centers that are meant to revolutionize its state-led global communication.

In a ceremony held this week, Prato’s “Green Dragon Club” (青龙俱乐部), a local Chinese community center and dragon boat club, was presented with a pair of plaques designating it as both the “overseas communication base” and the “liaison office” of the Wenzhou International Communication Center (温州国际传播中心).

This international communication center, or ICC, is one of a growing number of local hubs in provinces and cities across China meant to harness the strength of local media groups — in coordination with local propaganda offices — to supercharge the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to “tell China’s story well,” and strengthen its “discourse power” globally. As CMP has previously reported, Zhejiang province has led the charge in forming local ICCs. By our latest count, it now hosts 16 local centers — five times the national average.

The ceremony at the “Green Dragon Club” was attended by a top Wenzhou media official, Liu Shenyang (柳深扬), identified in a report by the weekly Europe Chinese News (欧洲华人报) as the editor-in-chief of the Wenzhou News Media Center (温州市新闻传媒中心), a local government-run media office founded in 2023 — and identified at the time as a “new milestone in the development of [the city’s propaganda work.” Liu was previously the top official at the city’s state-run television and radio broadcaster.

It is unclear how the new “overseas communication base” of the Wenzhou ICC will operate in practice, and how it means to drive China’s agenda in Italy or Europe beyond. But it was an opportunity, at the very least, for Wenzhou officials to claim a small victory in their effort to heed Xi Jinping's call to "restructure the pattern of [China's] international communication."

“This recognition brings our cooperation to a new level," Liu said as he unveiled the pair of plaques in Prato and, according to the Europe Chinese News report, "made commemorative gifts to major Chinese community organizations."

Perhaps you have never heard of cultural specialties like “Tea Opera” or the “Four Famous Dishes.” But if local government hype can be believed, these and other special attributes of Linchuan (临川), one of two districts in the coastal city of Fuzhou, could be coming to a social media account near you. This week, the district became the latest local administration in China to establish its own “international communication center” (国际传播中心), adding to a growing network of local-level propaganda hubs aimed at amplifying China’s voice on the global stage — often through accounts on major international social media platforms.

Attended by Fuzhou’s top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official, Wu Yiwen (吴宜文), and its chief of propaganda, Liao Xiaoyong (廖晓勇), the center’s inauguration was billed in official media coverage as a significant shift in the area’s external propaganda strategy. Referencing the central leadership’s move over the past three years to strengthen global communication through local government and media participation, Wu Yiwen told those gathered at the launch event that the Linchuan ICC was “an important measure in thoroughly implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping’s key discourse on strengthening international communication capabilities.”

The Linchuan initiative mirrors similar moves across China, where local authorities have established dedicated international communication centers equipped with social media teams and foreign language expertise. The Linchuan center, said Wu, would have three key priorities: promoting local achievements in economic development, expanding overseas exchanges, and “accelerating our district’s external propaganda and promotion.”

The aim of this nationwide push is to leverage local resources and storytelling in the hope that this might present a more colorful and appealing picture of China to international audiences, moving beyond the one-dimensional messaging of central state media — for years the primary vehicle of efforts to raise China’s “discourse power,” which leaders say is critical in bolstering the country’s comprehensive national power (CNP).

But Linchuan’s reports of its redoubled efforts to seek global influence may just be more hype about hype. While the ICC launch trumpeted the district’s efforts in recent years to build what it called “a social media platform account matrix” (社交平台账号矩阵), our search turned up no related accounts on foreign social media channels.

In fact, Linchuan’s new ICC joins a growing list of local centers that speak more to domestic political priorities than international engagement. The brass plaque unveiled in official photographs may be the center’s most potent statement — a signal to Party superiors that local leaders have heeded Xi Jinping’s call.

Standing in the background as officials unveiled the glistening sign was the center’s motto: “Using Linchuan as ink to paint a world painting scroll.” Awkward in its phrasing, and indistinct in its meaning, the slogan reads like a cautionary note about the central-level policy by which Xi Jinping has hoped to sharpen the focus of external propaganda. In some cases, certainly, the leadership’s strategic push to leverage local resources for global influence might leave a lasting impression. In many more cases at the local level, however, it results only in ink blotches of bureaucratic self-congratulation.

China has unveiled new regulations governing the release of military-related information on the internet, marking a formal legalization, and possible tightening, of control over military-themed content in cyberspace. Military and defense-related content enjoys significant popularity among Chinese internet users, but the leadership is clearly keen to ensure that sensitive information — a concept broadly applied in China — and speculation do not undermine the official narrative around the country’s military development and capabilities.

The regulations were issued over the weekend by ten government departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet control body, and the Central Military Commission — the country’s highest military body, chaired since 2012 by Xi Jinping. They cover a broad spectrum of channels, including dedicated military affairs websites, military-themed columns, and social media accounts focused on the military. The rules are due to take effect on March 1.

Measures for the Management of Military Information Dissemination on the Internet (Chinese) consists of 30 articles in all, setting down strict guidelines for managing military affairs content online. Addressing everything from the establishment of military-themed websites to the operation of social media accounts focusing on related matters, the rules apply to anyone “taking part in online communication activities involving military information” (从事互联网军事信息传播活动) within China’s borders.

Political language related to information controls is clear and prominent in the document. Article 3 explicitly demands that all related channels maintain the correct "political orientation" (正确的政治方向) and "public opinion guidance" (舆论导向), the latter term referring to the prerogative of media control in order to maintain social and political stability. The rules generally mandate that online military information must "maintain a favorable image of the military" (维护人民军队良好形象) while serving the interests of national defense.

Under the framework initiated by the new rules, detailed in Article 8, content providers must go through a strict verification process. Military-themed account operators will need to be verified through identity authentication, and their accounts must display special identification markers (专门标识). The regulations particularly focus on the display of military-related terms and symbols, and prohibit unauthorized use in account names or branding of phrases like "People's Liberation Army" (解放军), "armed forces" (武装力量), or "military industry" (军工).

The regulations echo criticism from state media last year of the misuse of state media brands, including the CCP’s official People’s Daily. Cases of alleged misuse of state media brands have been rampant, not least because these offer a degree of safety and credibility in the minds of some online publishers — an issue CMP covered back in October. The new rules from the CAC suggest that perhaps similar confusion has reigned in the hugely popular field of military affairs content.

These days, the death of a newspaper is hardly, well, news. In China, as in much of the rest of the world, information consumers long ago turned toward fresh digital alternatives, including social media and news apps. The country’s latest report on internet use last year showed that it had more than one billion internet users, of which nearly 98 percent used online video services — now one of the most popular sources of content.

Mostly outside the headlines last month, the disappearance of print offerings in China’s media continued. Among the publications ceasing operations entirely was the Daily News (每日新报), a commercial newspaper launched a quarter century ago under the umbrella of Tianjin Daily (天津日报), the official mouthpiece of the Tianjin city leadership. The paper’s claim to fame back in December 2004, during the heyday of the metro newspaper in China, was to publish a single daily edition with 516 pages — a record at the time.

Joining the ranks of those that ceased publication (停刊) was Xijiang Metropolitan Daily (西江都市报), a paper based in the city of Wuzhou, in Guangxi, that was also launched in 2000. Like most commercial print publications in China, the paper was a spin-off of the local CCP-run outlet, in this case Wuzhou Daily (梧州日报). In many cases back in the halcyon days, as the advertising market soared on the back of breakneck economic growth, these “child papers” (子报) could provide the revenue stream to support their CCP parent publications. The bottom fell out of that market in the mid 2010s, with the emergence of powerful digital competitors like WeChat.

Also on the list of quiet exits was the Yunnan Economic Daily (云南经济日报), a general business newspaper under the official mouthpiece of the southwestern province of Yunnan, and Hohhot Evening News (呼和浩特晚报) in Inner Mongolia.

Another “child paper,” Tibet Business News (西藏商报), a subsidiary of the official Tibet Daily (西藏日报), announced that it would restructure and “enhance its digital presence” — code for shutting down its print operation and going fully digital.

In what might be a harbinger of harder times ahead, Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报), published by the Beijing chapter of the Chinese Communist Youth League consistently since 1981 — having weathered three closures in a history stretching back to March 1949 — announced that it would dispense with its weekend editions, publishing only on weekdays. The same decision was announced by Liaoshen Evening News (辽沈晚报) in the city of Liaoning, a commercial spin-off published since 1993 under the local CCP-led newspaper group.

Shanghai Literature News (文学报), a literary publication launched at the outset of the reform and opening period in April 1981, with support voiced by a number of literary figures, including the writer Bing Xin (冰心), told readers that it would now merge with Shanghai’s Wen Huibao (文汇报), continuing only as a weekly supplement.

Newspaper and magazine closures like these have become an annual ritual over the past decade, a sign of the changing commercial environment for print publications generally. In most cases, however, closures are confined to the metropolitan dailies that distinguished China’s press environment from the early 1990s through to the 2010s.

By contrast, the country’s “parent papers” — the newspapers on which the CCP at every level relies to define and confine the “mainstream” — have remained immune from these changes. Their identity, after all, is political, not commercial.

As a January 19 deadline looms to ban or sell TikTok, and as a key decision awaits from the US Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the related July 2024 act on “foreign adversary controlled applications,” many users of the popular video-sharing platform are already rendering judgment with their feet, seeking refuge in the most unlikely of places — the international version of a popular Chinese app that has a long track record of censorship and surveillance.

This week, more than 700,000 self-styled “TikTok refugees” have flocked to China’s RedNote platform, known at home as Xiaohongshu (小红书) — literally “little red book” — an Instagram-like platform that has long been a go-to space for posts on shopping, makeup, fashion and travel. The app currently has 300 million monthly active users, nearly 80 percent women.

The mass migration, announced with the hashtag #TikTokrefugees, has made the Chinese lifestyle-sharing app an odd escape route for American users of TikTok, some of whom have posted videos criticizing the actions of US lawmakers, and declaring provocatively that they are prepared to volunteer their personal data to the Chinese government. As of yesterday the hashtag had received more than 250 million views and was closing in on six million comments.

Some media, including CNN, have noted that the influx of users to China’s hugely popular RedNote, which to date has had few foreign users and little experience moderating content outside the Chinese language, has resulted in an unprecedented interaction of users across cultures and control regimes. TikTok, the American-based cousin of China’s domestic Douyin service, has never been an option for Chinese — resulting in alternative social universes spawned by the same algorithm. In its headline on the story, Semafor emphasized that the RedNote crossing was “an unlikely ‘cyberspace bridge’” between the two countries.

Hong Kong’s HK01, an online news outlet, quoted one Chinese translator from Hangzhou, Jacob Hui, sharing his reaction to his first interactions with American users of the platform. “I visited a livestream hosted by Chinese and American influencers on Xiaohongshu, and chatted with them, asking them things like what video games are popular in America.”

If the TikTok exodus surprised RedNote, it has delighted commentators in China, who have cast the event as an affirmation of China’s openness to cultural exchange, and further evidence of the hypocrisy of American values like freedom of speech — which state media have routinely panned over the decades as “so-called freedom of speech” (所谓的新闻自由).

Asked at a regular press conference yesterday whether China would step up controls on RedNote following the bump in foreign users, Guo Jiakun (郭嘉坤), a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), lost no time in spinning the trend, saying coolly that social media use was “a matter of personal choice” and affirming China’s support for “strengthening cultural exchanges and promoting mutual understanding among peoples of all countries.”

On the question of risk, Hu Xijin (胡锡进), the often outspoken former editor-in-chief of China’s Global Times newspaper, tied to the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship Peoples’ Daily, called the American influx to RedNote “an opportunity rather than a risk.” Writing on the Shanghai-based Observer (观察网) platform, Hu added that this marked “a rebalancing of online power relations between the US and China.”

“If RedNote succeeds, China will have a new lever to promote common human values with the outside world,” said Hu.

China Central Television (CCTV), the country’s state-run broadcaster, declared that TikTok users had found a “new home.”

Short-Lived Positives

While US TikTok refugees from what some, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have criticized as unconstitutional overreach may have found a temporary harbor and scored a Pyrrhic victory, their enthusiasm could prove short-lived as they grapple with the real conditions on the opposite side of the bridge — the world’s most active and comprehensive system for real-time content moderation and political censorship.

There have already been indications from sources inside RedNote, as reported by Reuters, who have said the platform is already working on its internal content review capacity to deal with the influx of English-language influencers. These developments, demanded by cyberspace authorities for all services operating in the country, can be expected to roll out along with the extra services RedNote has feted — such as an English-to-Chinese translation function, now in the works, and an “English Corner” that connects language partners.

On Tuesday, as TikTok refugee flows were arriving on the shores of RedNote, the platform announced that it was implementing new measures to ensure content was “upward and virtuous” (向上向善) — not exactly an ethos associated with the TikTok homeland, which has thrived on threading together the inventive and unpredictable. This idea of the upward was also coded in the RedNote announcement for what the CCP terms “positive energy” (正能量), which refers to the need for uplifting messages as opposed to critical or negative ones — and particularly the need for content that puts the Party and government in a positive light. The platform talked about “increasing guidance and support for positive content” (加大对正向内容的引导与扶持).

Just days into the exodus, there is already clear evidence that censorship mandates are being applied to RedNote’s new foreign users. One substantive result of this international cultural exchange, it seems, is that hundreds of thousands of American users of RedNote will soon have direct and intimate experience of what it means, and how it feels, to live under a system of all-embracing, granular, and unpredictable censorship. “Got a violation for my cooking video,” one American user posted, “so I shortened it and posted again, no violation.”

“Am I not allowed to show knives?”

As Shanghai’s annual political session began this week, a new proposal from one delegate called for more robust controls on social media platforms by using artificial intelligence. While the delegate, Chen Le (陈乐), chairman of a local business management and information systems firm​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​, said the technology could address growing government concerns about misinformation and privacy violations, the moralistic and political overtones were unmistakable. Chen suggested that AI could help monitor “information leaks” (爆料) through public accounts (公号) and ensure a “healthy ecology” online. 

The supervisor (监事) and top shareholder of Wanrui Puying Group (万瑞普盈集团), Chen is a member of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country’s top political advisory body that brings together representatives from various political parties, organizations, and ethnic groups. 

In his proposal, “Suggestions on Introducing AI Technology to Strengthen Self-Media Content Review,” Chen outlines four main recommendations to regulate China’s self-media platforms (自媒体平台), which over the past decade have become crucial channels for information sharing and the expression of opinion in China.

First, he calls for AI technology implementation for automated identification and review of content posts and reposts. This system, the proposal said, would use natural language processing and image recognition to conduct real-time monitoring of “information exposures” (爆料) and other sensitive content. 

Second, the proposal recommends a classification and tracking system for published videos. This system would employ AI to tag content as “genuine exposure” (真实爆料), meaning that the content was credible, “false information” (虚假信息), or “privacy violation” (隐私泄露). According to Chen, this would enable better management and accountability. The system would embed mechanisms to trace content back to the original publishers and combat rumors and misinformation. 

Chen Le’s third recommendation focuses on leveraging existing automated review capabilities from established news media platforms. This would involve cooperation between state media organizations, industry associations, and universities to share technical resources and expertise — ultimately reducing manual review costs while improving accuracy.

The final recommendation in Chen’s proposal is where the less techy aspects finally come in. Mirroring frequent calls from internet control authorities, he suggests a renewed emphasis on industry self-regulation and strengthening legal frameworks. This would also involve stronger penalties for violations and enhancing public education about responsible social media use.

Along with 32 other delegates in Shanghai this year, Chen also joined a proposal that critiques Shanghai’s Lunar New Year cultural offerings as lacking distinctiveness compared to celebrations in other cities. AI also figures in that proposal, which argues that it could be used to “incorporate intangible cultural heritage.”

Last Friday, in cities and counties across China, it was time to celebrate the crucial role journalists play in society. As the festivities unfolded, there was fun and games. But there were also stern reminders of the imperative of press control. Quite unlike the UN’s World Press Freedom Day, which every May is intended as a day of reflection among journalists and media about press freedom and professional ethics, China’s Journalist’s Day is a time for Party and government officials to reiterate the need for collaboration and compliance. 

The sense and spirit of what the Chinese Communist Party calls “the Marxist View of Journalism,” the heart of which is obedience to the Party itself, was conveyed with some emotion in a special video tribute aired on November 8 by China Central Television (CCTV), the state-run broadcaster. Called “Footprints are My Badge of Honor” (足迹是我的勋章), the segment was a montage of national glories — including space program breakthroughs and test successes for the AG600 amphibious aircraft — that had been faithfully documented by state media reporters. 

The announced winners of the China Journalism Awards (中国新闻奖), held each year since 1991, were a further sign of how CCP news values have been applied more strictly over the past decade — and particularly since Xi Jinping stressed in 2016 that media must “love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party.” Tellingly, the top winner in the Special Prize category this year went to a news report from the government’s official Xinhua News Agency with the headline: “Xi Jinping Unanimously Elected Chinese President, CMC chairman” (习近平全票当选中国国家主席、中央军委主席). 

The report, published on March 10, 2023, is a blatant propaganda spot about Xi’s formal appointment at head of state during the National People’s Congress — a decision already made politically at the Party Congress the previous October. Aside from a simple recounting of the “vote” and a brief account of Xi’s political biography, the story includes positive quotes from one local Chinese villager and one foreign professor in China. The latter, Josef Gregory Mahoney, is a regular go-to source for reports in China’s state media. “The elections will ensure that there is a steady hand at the helm, which will serve China well, particularly in this new era of new challenges,” Mahoney was quoted as saying in the report. 

But the values underlying China Journalist’s Day, the push for control as well as the key changes in the media environment in the country, could also be glimpsed in the myriad local celebrations of the holiday that happened last week. 

Control Meets Convergence 

One of the clearest trends in local celebrations, from the county level up through prefectural-level cities, was their concentration within local convergence media centers (融媒体中心), or CMCs, which are controlled by local propaganda departments and draw local official media outlets and party-state communication together under one roof. They are part of a decade-long effort by the CCP leadership under Xi Jinping to remake the country’s media system in ways that reconsolidate Party control while accommodating the realities of modern, mobile-based communication. 

Municipalities like Beijing and Tianjin now have 10-12 convergence media centers, while provinces tend to have 50-100 each, making for a nationwide network of more than 2,000. Most of these apply what is called a “central kitchen” (中央厨房), or hub, approach — producing for multimedia and social media across multiple platforms. 

In Zhejiang province’s Deqing Country (德清县) last week, activities for the day were organized by the “county convergence media center” (县融媒体中心). Participating journalists and press officials played a popular outdoor game called “Down Let the Forest Fall” (不倒森林), in which players arrayed in a circle must transfer colorful meter-long plastic rods using only the palm of one hand. The report on the festivities noted that “on occasion, they failed and [the rods] fell, resulting in laughter all around.” 

The same report from local authorities noted the need for journalists to serve the overall development goals of the county, and to “strictly grasp the correct political orientation and [correct] public opinion guidance” (牢牢把握正确的政治方向和舆论导向). These terms, harkening back to the brutal crackdown on political protests in June 1989, are unmistakable references to the need for strict CCP control of the media to maintain regime stability. 

In Longgang (龙港), a prefectural-level city in Zhejiang province just south of Wenzhou, celebrations were hosted by the Longgang Convergence Media Center (龙港市融媒体中心), with the local CCP secretary, He Zongjing (何宗静), officiating. In a clear echo of Xi Jinping’s national propaganda notion of “telling China’s story well,” He stressed the need for local journalists to “tell Longgang stories well, and transmit the voice of Longgang well” (讲好龙港故事、传播龙港声音). 

Journalists must be guided, said He, by Xi Jinping’s central political concept, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” Most importantly, once again, they must “strictly grasp the correct political orientation” (牢牢把握正确政治方向). “A happy holiday to you all. You've all worked so hard!" Secretary He exclaimed in a ceremony during which several journalists were honored on stage for their service. 

Meanwhile, up north in Shanxi’s Xia County, the Xia County Convergence Media Center (夏县融媒体中心), the center’s head, Dong Xinhui (董新慧), expressed “her fondest thanks” to “journalists on the front lines,” urging them to “a sense of responsibility and mission” (责任感和使命感) in promoting the county and generating a positive external image. There were even musical and dance performances, including a tune called “The Light of the Journalist” (记者之光).

Merging News and Propaganda 

As Journalist’s Day celebrations were reported across the country in the past week, one of the most tell-tale signs of what journalism means in China today came as local officials made constant references to “news propaganda” (新闻宣传), which refers explicitly to the use of the news form to conduct state propaganda activities and reach the goals of the leadership.

In a speech to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Xinhua News Agency in 1991, Politburo Standing Committee member Li Ruihuan (李瑞環) said that the key purpose of the "news propaganda front" — and the role, in other words, of the press — was to "comprehensively and accurately propagate the Party's basic line."

In Yingkou, a prefectural-level city in China's northeastern Liaoning province, the local report on Journalist’s Day festivities noted that 10 local journalists had been honored with excellence prizes for their “outstanding contributions to news propaganda.” In Dejiang County, Zhejiang, journalists were urged to “continuously create new prospects for news propaganda” (不断开创新闻宣传新局面).

On Wednesday, one of China’s largest tea chains found itself at the center of an online storm after a video emerged of employees for the company apparently wearing cardboard signs and makeshift cardboard handcuffs to enforce workplace discipline — public displays of shame that had disturbing echoes of the country’s political past.  

The offending post, made on September 17 to the official Douyin and Xiaohongshu accounts of the Guangdong operations of Good Me (古茗茶饮) — a tea chain with more than 5,000 locations across the country — showed several employees on site at a Good Me shop standing with their heads cast down, their hands bound in front with what appeared to be cardboard cup holders. Handwritten signs around their necks read: “The crime of forgetting to include a straw”; and “The crime of knocking over the teapot.”

The meme the Good Me account seemed to be riffing on was not a contemporary, social media derived one, but rather an extremely painful episode from China’s past. In the midst of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, millions of Chinese branded as “class enemies” were persecuted in brutal public spectacles known as “struggle sessions” (批斗大会).  In many cases, they had their heads shaved, and were forced to wear dunce caps and signs identifying their supposed crimes as they were subjected to physical and verbal attacks by crazed mobs.

For China’s media and internet authorities, the Cultural Revolution is generally not a subject to be talked about at all. And for many Chinese who remember the period, which was ended by the ouster and arrest in October 1976 of the so-called Gang of Four, it remains a silent source of pain and fear.

In other words — not funny.

The post quickly went viral, but for all the wrong reasons. Most comments on the video on both platforms expressed shock and ridicule at what seemed to be extremely unfair and inhumane treatment of employees on the one hand, and an acute lack of good taste on the other. By Wednesday the video had been removed and Good Me was scrambling to contain the damage.

According to a report from Shanghai’s The Paper, the incident involved the company’s branch in Shenzhen’s Longhua district, where an employee involved in the filming said it was intended as a joke, and that the three employees in the video had volunteered to take part. The employee said the branch did not punish employees for small mistakes like forgetting straws.

On Wednesday afternoon, Good Me issued a public apology through its Weibo account. “We’re sorry,” it said. “We were playing with punchlines, and it went all wrong.”

The term here for “playing with punchlines,” wan’geng (玩梗), has become a popular video content form in the digital media space, essentially referring to humorous posts spawned by existing memes circulating on social media. The form, familiar to any regular user of social media in any language today, has given rise to millions of humorous videos on China’s mobile internet — but also, from time to time, stern warnings from state-run media. In February 2022, the People’s Tribune, a journal published by the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper, warned that society must be mindful of “the deviations in value orientation brought about by playing with punchlines.”

The apology from Good Me further explained that the video from the employees had attempted to riff on a recently popular punchline meme about “double-cup handcuffs” (双杯杯托手铐). “We thought it was funny, but it brought misunderstanding and unease to some netizens,” said the company. “After receiving feedback from netizens, we took down the video at the first available moment.”

Internet users responding to the apology, numbering more than 60,000 by noon Thursday, remained mostly unmoved. Some called on the company to make a public apology directly to the employees, while others suggested a video apology would be more appropriate. For most, it was reminder of the pitfalls of jumping on the video humor bandwagon.

“If you play with punchlines, you must be careful,” wrote one user in a comment under the company’s apology. “You’ll definitely learn your lesson now.”