for these hours Weibo, the most popular social network in China, has implemented a measure that is already highly controversial. From this Thursday the platform publicly share the location and IP address of each user in their messagesas well as in your profile. The intended purpose of this definition is to “reduce bad behavior” of its users online.

The decision was announced via the official Weibo profile. According to the platform, the new settings are aimed at preventing accounts that “impersonate parties involved in hot topics” or spread “malicious misinformation.” [sic].

Weibo is considered the “Chinese Twitter” and currently has about 570 million active users. And there is nothing the people behind each account can do to prevent this sensitive data from being shared publicly, as this option cannot be manually activated or deactivated in the service settings.

As explained Reutersnow every new post on Weibo shows the IP address next to the label with the province or municipality it comes from. And in case the message is made from outside of China, the country of origin will be identified with its corresponding IP address.

“Weibo has always strived to maintain a healthy and orderly discussion environment and protect the rights and interests of users in order to quickly receive real and effective information,” they explained on the service.

As expected, the reaction around the new measure taken by Weibo were mostly negative. And while there have been comments from users who believe that this is a positive solution to the spread of rumors and false news on sensitive topics, they are the least of them.

Weibo and the controversial measure that increases the shadow of Chinese censorship

LinkedIn cedió ante la censura China | Weibo

After all, Chinese netizens have many reasons to be mostly pessimistic. censorship the activity of the Asian giant is known all over the world and forced many Western companies to leave the country. Examples of LinkedIn and Yahoo! in this sense they were among the most recent.

This is not the first time that Weibo has been at the center of events due to the use of measures that restrict freedom of expression. A decade ago, the platform hit the news after posting a list of topics to be censored among its posts; They ranged from revealing national secrets to inciting protests and demonstrations through, among other things, promoting “bad superstitions”.

It is not known whether the Chinese government influenced the social network’s latest decision, although this is not unusual. At the end, has all the hallmarks of a deterrentmore than anything.

Knowing how the authorities of this country control the activity of users on the Internet, it is logical to assume that Weibo already had the ability to record the IP address and location – exact or approximate – of each user, just not to make it public. Now the disclosure of these data is presented a clear warning to the public that their footsteps are closely followed.

And while this is happening in China, in the West, the discussion about what freedom of speech is is increasingly twisted for the sake of convenience. Let’s hope that no platform in this part of the world comes up with such a terrible idea as Weibo.

Source: Hiper Textual

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