The massive Chinese social media network Sina Weibo informed its platform’s most popular users last week that they must display their real identities, including names, gender, IP locations, as well as professional and educational background, on their account page starting at the end of October.
The policy will first apply to Weibo users with more than 1 million followers and later extend to those with half a million followers. It is believed that other social media platforms in China will also follow the move.
China implemented the online real-name registration system in 2012. Under the policy, personal data are stored on the platforms and are invisible to other users. Last year, Chinese social media platforms started displaying the IP locations of social media users to crack down on online rumors, including witness accounts of social incidents such as protests.
The latest change was confirmed by Weibo’s CEO Wang Gaofei, who briefly activated the personal information display on his profile page on October 20, 2023. Wang’s social credit status, employment, and professional and educational background were all listed on this profile page.
The new policy triggered a heated debate on Chinese social media. Unexpectedly, online patriots, who are usually fairly united, split into two camps over the new requirements.
Supporters argued that the policy could reduce online rumours and that influencers should bear more social responsibility and reveal their genuine identity to their readers. Among them is state-owned Global Times’ top commentator Hu Xijin, who commented on the new measure on Weibo on October 16:
This isn’t about influencers, it’s about basic privacy rights being taken away.
I don’t like that they’re forcing people to display a gender, that’s honestly pretty weird, but the rest of it they have a legitimate state interest in making public. There are influencers that have financial backers and connections and they need to be exposed for the public good.
As for privacy, do you… actually think China’s government doesn’t already have all of this information?
There’s a subtle difference between giving the information to the government and having it displayed forcefully in the profile page
dude its basically asking them to do a LinkedIn, not post their fucking address or something
but since its ebil china I guess they are just 1984 orwell googoogaga or whatever liberalism you ingest
linkedin shows what i tell them to show. It might be completely fake info
linkedin doesn’t show the social score or the location of the IP addresses on the profile
if you are forced to have on your twitter profile “manager at xyz corp., social score 822, real name john doe, tweets from flushing, new york”, you happily accept it and continue to tweet as normal?
okay but yall know this thing is complete bullshit right?
Like that doesn’t actually exist for people
This is also for influencers, not everyone lol, most popular people have all this known on their version of wikipedia
The article states that part of social score.
Try not paying some bills and then take a train. Once you’re in the blacklist (失信黑名单) you’re basically fucked, as id cards are electronically checked at least 4x per trip
the article is bullshit, so yeah its going to reference other bullshit. You don’t know shit about china, you know it from these lazy articles.
did you make up that fanfic in your own head or are you parroting one of your lib buddies
The problem with you tankie guys is that you think you know china better than an expat
Why you don’t just move there? The perfect country, the utopia
And their IP location?
Can you link an example?
https://www.modash.io/find-influencers/china
search up any of these names on Baidu
Have you heard of something called stalking?
Sure, and I’ve heard of restraining orders. I’m sure China is considering how to deal with problems caused by transparency.