Weibo Is Not Trustworthy

Starting 2010, Weibo has become a news reader and note-taking tool for me. I simply retweet news and put my thoughts on top of that. I'm not a big fan of its social features (a.k.a @-your-friends).

But nowadays, thanks to 'Hotness ranking' and chasing after number of retweets, Weibo has become an eyeball-attraction place. You will see everyone is posting/retweeting posts like 'ChengGuan beat pedler to death', 'a farmer's home got pulled down' or 'corrupted officials and their concubines (often posted with seducing photos of unknown girls)'. All violent and erotic, aren't they?

'Eye-ball attraction', it reminds me of the wild Internet in late 1990s, when portals and websites' top priority was to gain people's traffic. Nowadays those people are already present, so the game has become making them 'followers' of you. In order to do that, the very first step is to post a stunning news as mentioned above.

I am a fan of HBO's Newsroom show. There's one thing is in this show impressed me -- Will keeps emphasizing, "source, source, source". There're many scenes that Will waves his arms and shouting, 'We need one more source' on a freaking news. This rule is 'two-sources-rule' in journalism. While in Weibo, the online news platform, this rule can be compromised. Authentic content and truth, are not their concern. But how come verified news agency's or newspaper's official accounts have betrayed their tradition?

It largely contributes to the measurement of Weibo account's success, which is simply two numbers, 1. number of retweets 2. number of comments. While the purpose of people buying and reading newspaper is to receive news, it's more like an entertainment activities or collection of time fragments to get on Weibo. You see the difference of two original intentions here? This is why we see Weibo are full of rumors, unverified news, curious and excited Chinese netizens. Behind this, there are online editors, with monthly salary RMB3500, posting one more hatred tweet, wishing more retweets would lead to his/her next promotion.