Chinese social networking firm Tencent Holdings has shut down 133 accounts on its popular mobile messaging app for "distorting history", state media said on Tuesday. The WeChat accounts, including one whose name translates as "This is not history", spread "fabricated information" and confused the public, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

The censored accounts "were against laws and regulations", "disobeyed socialist core values" and "severely disturbed the online order".

China operates the world's most sophisticated internet censorship mechanism, known as the Great Firewall. Censors maintain a tight grip on what can and can't be published online, especially anything seen to undermine the ruling Communist Party.