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Users flooded Sina Weibo with the hashtag #IAmGay, prompting the site to reverse its LGBTI ban.

Jesse Jones, StarObserver.com.au

Chinese social media site Sina Weibo has reversed its decision to ban LGBTI content.

The site yesterday announced it would no longer include LGBTI material in its ban of violent and pornographic content, CNET has reported.

Users flooded the site with the hashtag #IAmGay over the weekend in protest.

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“I am gay and I’m proud. Even if I get taken down, there are tens of millions like me,” wrote one person, in a post that was shared more than 100,000 times.

The protest has gained plenty of attention, with state-run newspaper People’s Daily calling for tolerance of gay people while still supporting the removal of explicit content from online platforms.

Sina Weibo is China’s equivalent of Twitter, with almost 400 million users.

It had announced on Friday that it would clean up content to comply with China’s new online security laws.

While homosexuality is not illegal in China, activists say conservative attitudes sometimes prompt government crackdowns.

Sina Weibo has already cleared more than 50,000 posts from the platform as part of the content purge.

Call Me By Your Name was also dropped from a Chinese film festival last month amid the cleanup of ‘pornographic’ material.

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