(Beijing) – The search giant Baidu Inc. has said private companies can no longer use bulletin board forums popular with certain groups, after an uproar started over firms using a platform for hemophiliacs to promote shoddy services.

Baidu said a statement on January 12 that it would no longer cooperate with private companies on promotions that appear on the Baidu Tieba bulletin board forums.

The decision came after the host of a Baidu Tieba forum set up by patients with hemophilia – a blood disorder – wrote online that Baidu replaced him last week with someone from a private company in Xi'an, in the northwestern province of Shaanxi.

The former host said that since the new host took control of the 5,000-member forum it has been littered with ads promoting treatment and drugs from unlicensed medical facilities.

The former host posted a screenshot of a smartphone chat that he said showed a Baidu agent telling a fellow hemophiliac patient that the company was selling the rights to run the forum to the highest bidder.

People who use other Baidu forums for patients suffering from other diseases say they have encountered similar problems last week, although it is unclear when the search company started handing over the forums to private companies.

This has prompted many Internet users to complain that Baidu is engaging in unethical business practices. The search engine company has been under fire for years over a business model that gives priority to search results based on how much someone paid. Critics say this has allowed unscrupulous businesses to promote substandard goods and services.

In March last year, Baidu got into a squabble with the country's largest private hospital association over paid search results.

Baidu told Caixin that the bulletin board forums are not being used for profit. It also denied that the forums were being sold to the highest bidder.

Baidu says it has 19 million bulletin board forums with a total of 1 billion members.

Ren Wei, vice director of the Media Law Research Center under China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, said Baidu should be allowed to profit from the forums, but this will run into problems when the bulletin boards involve matters of public interest.

"If Baidu wants to be socially responsible, it should never try to cash in on something it is unable to shield from false advertizing, no matter how profitable it might be," he said.

(Rewritten by Li Rongde)