Two of China’s popular science social media accounts were suddenly scrubbed, marking a step-up in censorship on China’s online platforms. Independent media outlets, Elephant Magazine and its affiliated PaperClip, and their founder’s personal account vanished from China’s primary social media platforms on July 14 without warning. Neither China’s Internet watchdog nor other authorities posted any comments or punishment. Millions of followers were surprised to see an error message when accessing the accounts on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, YouTube-like Bilibili, and Quora-like Zhihu. Attempts to access their WeChat official accounts failed, and a message saying the content had been blocked as the account had “violated regulations on the management of accounts offering public information service on the Chinese Internet” appeared. China’s new Internet regulation, which launched in January, has led to the forced closure of piles of official accounts, that covered topics ranging from politics, the military, diplomacy, or economics, to health. …