Happy Nice Mall

A hashtag calling for the feature’s swift cancellation had amassed 8,000 posts and had more than 100 million views before it was censored in late April. A university student in Zhejiang province sued the Chinese social platform Weibo in March for leaking personal information without his consent when the platform automatically showed his location. Others pointed to the app’s hypocrisy, as celebrities, government accounts, and Weibo’s CEO were exempted from location tags.

Despite the backlash, officials have signaled that the changes will continue. An article in the state publication China Comment argued that location tags are necessary to “cut the black hand that manipulates narratives behind the internet cable”. draft regulation The China Cyberspace Administration, the country’s internet regulator, mandates that user IP addresses must be displayed “notably.”

“If censorship is about dealing with messages and those who send the messages, that mechanism really works on the audience,” said Han Rongbin, professor of media and politics at the University of Georgia.

With worsening relations with the United States and China and propaganda constantly blaming malevolent foreign powers for dissatisfaction in China, Mr. Han said the new policy could be quite effective in staving off complaints.

“People worried about outside interference is a trend right now. That’s why it works better than censorship. “People are buying,” he said.

Vitriol can be overwhelming. Mr. Li, a Chinese national who speaks only on condition that his surname is used for privacy reasons, was targeted by trolls after his profile was associated with the United States where he lives. Nationalist influencers accused him of working overseas to “incite protest” in western China, in a post criticizing the local government for handling the sudden death of a student. Accounts listed him and several others as examples of “spy infiltration”. A post that publicly embarrassed them got 100,000 likes before it was eventually censored.

She had to change her Weibo username to prevent her Harassers from following her, which was flooded with derogatory messages. Despite using Weibo for more than 10 years, he is wary of hoax attacks these days. “They want me to shut up, so I will,” said Mr. Li.