China Removes Anonymity of Bloggers' Accounts With More Than 500,000 Followers

China's popular social media platforms are requiring "self-media" accounts with over 500,000 followers to disclose real-name information, prompting concerns over increased doxxing and privacy among some users. Reuters reports: China's most popular social media platforms on Tuesday announced that "self-media" accounts with more than 500,000 followers will be asked to display real-name information, a controversial measure that has prompted concerns over doxxing and privacy among some users. "Self-media" includes news and information not necessarily approved by the government, a genre of online content regulators have cracked down on in recent years to "purify" China's cyberspace. [...]

Rumors of the new policy had prompted lively debate among users. Some, like former state media editor Hu Xijin, have defended the measure as necessary in order to force influential accounts to use more responsible speech. Others, however, have expressed concerns that the measure would make doxxing easier and platforms would further remove online users' anonymity in the future.

The new measures will remove the anonymity of thousands of influencers on social media platforms that are used daily by hundreds of millions of Chinese. Several of the platforms said that accounts with over 1 million followers would be affected first and those that do not comply would face restrictions in their online traffic and income as a consequence.

Anonymity Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, bad, when you're a threat to the state.
-Anonymous Coward

At 500000 followers.

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume most would be considered a public figure... Seems strange that there would still be anonymity.

The other end of the spectrum

[alvinrod]

As weird of a place as message boards in the vein of 4chan are where it's essentially only anonymous posters, I find them far more fascinating because without personal reputation the only thing that can exist is the idea. While it's not something that can serve as the basis for any actual human society, I think stripping away everything else would cultivate better results than alternatives where personalities can dominate a conversation. Science has occasionally run into this problem from time to time. There are also arguments for reputation-based systems where even if a person isn't known, it's not the same utterly anonymous chaos. Adding trust to a system means less of a need to be fully on guard at all times.

Irrespective of that, I don't consider China's motives pure. This is meant to quell dissent and they don't care who else might be caught up in the net in order to achieve that end goal. I don't think it will work either. Dissenters will just move underground or find ways around this by constantly moving accounts to stay below any threshold. Meanwhile regular people wind up being punished.

Re: The other end of the spectrum

[ToasterMonkey]

Do you think if we had fully anonymous impromptu speakers at local town halls or school board meetings we'd get better ... ideas? Without moderators even?

It's bad enough when complete nut jobs have to register in advance to speak at these things. What you're suggesting doesn't work. We tried it, you get 4chan. Absolutely nothing good could come of it in a school board meeting for example, look at what happened during covid when zoom codes got leaked, now just open it up... wtaf do you think would happen?

Ano

Re:

[martin-boundary]

The problem is that "influencers" and peole who actively try to propagate certain ideas to half a million people or more don't do this for pure idea propagation. They do this to either make money or to push an agenda. There's no reason for such people to actually be anonymous. It's not like anyone is putting a gun to their heads and forcing them to become influencers to make money.

Personally, I like to know the business address of whoever is trying to extract my hard earned cash from me. Same with witness

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

We have the same problem in the West. We have bloggers and YouTubers who consider themselves the "new media", as opposed to the "legacy media". They want to be taken seriously, invited to press conferences at the highest levels of government, used as reliable sources by others.

They aren't, they are just bloggers, and most of them are hyper partisan.

When it is suggested that they join professional standards bodies, or be regulated by press regulators, or work with organizations that specialize in fact findin

social credit rating

[ZipNada]

I expect this will eventually tie in to the Social Credit System, which can only happen if the censors know who you are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

It's a way to condition the populace and punish people for criticizing the Party.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

By chance did you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]?

The government censors ALREADY know who the bloggers are. It's just that the bloggers could remain anonymous with the public using an alias. Now if they have more than 500K followers, they have to use their real name.

Re:

[Geoffrey.landis]

By chance did you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]? The government censors ALREADY know who the bloggers are.

The link given is an interesting discussion of the social credit system... but does not state that the government already knows who the bloggers are.

"Self Media"

[sound+vision]

I like this term, "self media". It seems a better fit than "social media".

Everyone should do this

[Blightor]

Anonymous influencing is more globally societal damaging now and particularly into the future (AI) than is really addressed in the article.

Not that its going to be a popular opinion on here... :/

'Asked'... ;)

[Bruce66423]

Euphemisms rule in China's 'democracy'.

500k is nothing...

[LamboAlpha]

I am thinking that some government entities over there easily has 499,999 bot/fake accounts that they can move around and subscribe to anyone they chose. I bet they even have a FEW to spare.