Photo: JAKUB PORZYCKI/NURPHOTHO/PICTURE ALLIANCE / Deutsche Welle
The initiative, which the companies have decided to carry out of their own volition, since there is currently no legal mandate for it, seeks to “prevent Internet users from pretending to be in other places to spread rumours”, publish this Sunday (17.04.2022) the newspaper South China Morning Post.
In recent months, social networks have been the main way of escape of the Chinese population to air their fed up with the harsh zero covid policy of the authorities, which includes massive confinements, border closures and the obligation to undergo constant PCR tests, among other measures.
Although these posts are quickly censored and removed from Chinese cyberspace, the videos and posts have lately leaked quickly to Western networks such as Twitter or Facebook, where videos of Shanghai residents have been seen -confined for three weeks – confronting the police and testimonies of the population about the harshness of the confinement.
The Weibo social network, one of the most used in the Asian country with 250 millions of users and similar to the censored Twitter, already established this policy a few weeks ago and now others will be added such as Douyin – the Chinese version of TikTok with 600 million accounts-, Zhihu, Kuaishou (videos) or Jinri Toutiao news aggregator.
Zhihu, a popular platform of questions and answers, pointed out that the location of the users will be visible in each publication.
Although the Chinese Government has increased control over the contents that are disseminated on the networks, for now there is no law that obliges social networks to publish the location of their users.
However, the measure arrives after that in ma rzo the China Cyberspace Administration warned that this year’s campaign to “bring order to the chaos ‘online'” would include the persecution of the spread of rumours.
It is also the main initiative that the platforms have taken in the last five years to promote the transparency of identities on the Internet.
According to the companies cited By SCMP, the IP address will not be displayed, but the province where the user is located, or the country in the case of those accessing from outside China, will be visible.
CP (efe, South China Morning Post)