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Officials for the county, around 200 miles away from the capital Beijing, said an investigation was under way, in a post shared on China's instant messaging app, WeChat.

Each day the speaker refuses to act is another day that more kids could meet the same fate as Nylah Anderson, a 10-year-old from Pennsylvania, who died after she decided to try a choke challenge that a TikTok algorithm recommended to her on its “For You” feed, or Carson Bride, a 16-year-old from Oregon, who died by suicide after classmates incessantly bullied him anonymously over Snapchat and other instant messaging apps.

Among other suggestions, prosecutors say, victims should be wary of people who try to move conversations to encrypted instant messaging apps such as Whatsapp, Signal and others.

They say the defendants would work in teams to pull Chinese investors into chat groups on QQ - a popular Chinese instant messaging service similar to WhatsApp.

Some appear to co-ordinate their posts on a Discord server - an instant messaging and chat community - which refers to them as a "Shitposting Army".