Weibo, China's most popular social media platform, has implemented a policy that has already sparked widespread outrage. Starting this Thursday, the site will publish every user's location and IP address in their posts and on their profile. The stated goal of this determination is to "decrease bad behavior" among its Internet users.
The decision was announced on the official Weibo account. The new settings attempt to block accounts that "impersonate parties interested in hot topics" or propagate "malicious disinformation," according to the company.
Weibo is often regarded as the "Chinese Twitter," with around 570 million active users. And because there is no mechanism to manually activate or delete this private information from the settings, the owners behind the user still had no means of stopping it from being published publicly
An IP address, like a phone number, is a unique identifier on the Internet. An address of this type identifies a device that is connected to the Internet. Each device is connected with software that can be linked to a location.
Weibo, like Twitter, has struggled with disinformation and misinformation on its site, including campaigns relating to Covid-19 and the Ukraine conflict. In the past, the service had implemented more dramatic measures, such as deactivating accounts linked to recognized influence networks.
According to Reuters, the IP reveal will only be applied to Weibo users who are not in China. For users within China, the platform will reveal the region or province in which they reside while concealing their IP addresses. This distinction makes some sense when you consider that many disinformation campaigns are seeded by people in other countries.
Those areas will now be shown on the profiles of Weibo users. The site will display the province or municipality from where Chinese users are posting. This just happens in places where we interact with individuals.
Many people dislike the fit since it reduces their online anonymity. Furthermore, the new setting cannot be disabled.
As expected, the reactions to Weibo's new measure have been mostly negative. And, while there have been comments from users who believe that combating the spread of rumors and fake news stories on sensitive topics is evidence gathered, they are in the minority.
"Weibo has been committed to ensuring a healthy and orderly discussion environment, as well as safeguarding users' rights and interests in obtaining accurate and timely information," the service explained.
Under the notice, these same effects of new rules were already visible, as large numbers of user comments all carried an additional label indicating the state or municipal government of the user's IP address.
