BEIJING — What do the subjects of these Chinese news reports have in common?

■ The decay of moral standards in villages in northeastern China.

■ Arson on a bus in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province.

■ A girl from Shanghai flees from a Lunar New Year dinner at her boyfriend’s family home in the south because of appalling living conditions.

The powerful Cyberspace Administration of China, whose mission is to censor online information and block some websites (including that of The New York Times), has judged all those reports to be based on false information spread through social media platforms.

The reports were cited in an agency announcement posted on Sunday as examples justifying a new regulation. The agency said it would punish websites that publish “directly as news reports unverified content found on online platforms such as social media.”