http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/world/asia/17beijing.html?_r=1

China Tests New Controls on Twitter-Style Services

By JONATHAN ANSFIELD

Published: July 16, 2010

BEIJING — China’s biggest Internet companies are testing new controls on some local alternatives to Twitter to prevent them from becoming channels for the proliferation of content the authorities dislike.

The measures highlight the trouble with efforts by the government to cultivate homegrown sites akin to Twitter and Facebook, both of which it blocked last year, even as it bolsters mechanisms to police Internet traffic and curb unregulated expression online.

China’s 420 million Internet users are well accustomed to the daily handiwork of the state’s vast yet shadowy censorship apparatus, like shuttered blogs, dead links and inaccessible Web sites. Less common, though, is the widespread tinkering many have detected on new Chinese microblogging services in the past week.

Several major Internet portals, including QQ and Sina, home to China’s most popular microblog platform so far, along with the Web arm of People’s Daily, said their Twitter-style services were in “testing mode” this week. Two others, NetEase and Sohu, also suspended microblogging services, for maintenance, they said.

By Thursday, microbloggers on Sina, which claims to have amassed 20 million users since it began in August, found that they could not post working links to any foreign-based Web sites. One media editor who has 22,000 followers on his microblog wrote that users could not even search his name.

The rival site Sohu appeared to be particularly affected. After going down for maintenance from Friday of last week to Monday, its microblog service offered no search function at all. Users were also unable to publish links to any sites outside of Sohu. Links to other sites, when posted, failed to materialize.

Influential liberal intellectuals and public interest lawyers also saw their blogs and microblogs on Sohu, and to a lesser extent on Sina, unplugged on Wednesday and Thursday. One of them, Yao Xiaoyuan, posted a list of 61 names of blogs shut on Sohu to another blog of his, on Sina, calling the event the July 14 massacre. Sina later erased that post.

An activist lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan, grumbled that his first post to his latest Sohu blog was purged within five minutes.

“Sohu, since when did you become so timid?” he wrote on Twitter, which some Chinese continue to use, relying on proxy services to evade China’s fire walls. Other bloggers reasoned that Sohu was acting to appease officials.

In telephone interviews, people speaking for several of the affected sites denied tightening controls. They said their services had undergone constant testing ever since they began operating. But they had no clear explanation for why they had not noted so previously.

“This isn’t really news; it’s a daily event,” said one person in charge of microblogging service at Sina, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Employees at two other portals, however, said the latest tweaking was in response to direct pressure from Chinese Internet authorities to bolster their systems for monitoring content.

“I cannot give you any details, but you understand the situation in China,” said one, a ranking editor at Sohu, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal. “These products are still new to China. So when problems occur that affect their stability and dependability, we have to make adjustments to improve the stability of the products.”

The authorities permanently blocked Twitter and suspended a private Chinese equivalent, Fanfou, in July last year, after ethnic violence rocked the northwestern region of Xinjiang. But hoping to nurture more competitive media, Beijing has allowed microblogging on trusted domestic sites, which employ swarms of technicians and monitors to enforce propaganda orders.

Officials and state media are also taking advantage of the new tools, part of a parallel drive to better react to public opinion.

But government research institutes have repeatedly warned of the threat of hostile forces in China and abroad exploiting social networking sites to fan public unrest. Chen Tong, chief editor at Sina, acknowledged at a conference last month that controlling content on microblogs was a “very big headache.”

Hu Yong, a new media specialist at Peking University, said: “All along, there have been problems netizens discuss and news they spread that the government doesn’t like. So for the government to ramp up management of microblogs is completely predictable.”

Gao Yuxin and Lim Xinhui contributed research.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 17, 2010, on page A7 of the New York edition.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/25cb6340-8f1e-11df-a4de-00144feab49a.html

China’s ‘Twitters’ targetted by internet police

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

Published: July 14 2010 10:00 | Last updated: July 14 2010 15:29

Chinese micro-blogging sites have become the latest target of Beijing’s internet police, which have ordered companies providing Twitter-like services to step up monitoring and purge sites of politically “sensitive” words and expressions.

In the last week, most of the largest and most popular micro-blogging websites in China have been shut down for “maintenance” or have switched to “beta” or “testing” versions.

These back-up websites are being used while the companies “strengthen their self-censorship systems” and remove all politically sensitive content under orders from Chinese internet authorities, according to employees at some of those companies.

The micro-blogging site run by the popular Chinese portal Netease was unavailable on Wednesday , replaced with a notice saying the site had been “under maintenance” since 7pm on Tuesday.

The Twitter-like service provided by leading internet portal Sohu was also closed for “maintenance” over the entire weekend but reopened on Monday morning.

Other companies that have switched to “beta” or “testing” versions of their micro-blogging sites include Sina, which claims to have 20m registered micro-bloggers, as well as Tencent, QQ and even the micro-blog site of the People’s Daily website, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.

Popular US micro-blog and social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook and Youtube have all been banned in China since last year but domestic imitators have been allowed to flourish, provided they observe the government’s stringent self-censorship requirements.

“In some places the local Public Security Bureaux have started their own official micro-blogs which shows how the government understands the importance of this new communication channel,” according to Hu Yong, associate professor of journalism and communications at Peking University. “The government is strengthening its censorship over micro-blog contents but it’s very unlikely it will close them all down.”

The power of micro-blogging in China’s tightly controlled media environment has been highlighted by a case in recent days in which a popular crusading micro-blogger raised serious questions about the integrity of one of China’s most prominent business executives.

Tang Jun, a former president of Microsoft China and reportedly the highest-paid executive in China, was forced to admit he had not received a degree from the prestigious California Institute of Technology after accusations he falsified his resume were posted by micro-blogger Fang Zhouzi, known for his online campaigns against academic plagiarism and fraud in China.

The case has stirred up a frenzy on the Chinese internet and forced Mr Tang to reveal his “doctorate” came from an unaccredited US institution.

Propaganda authorities have since clamped down on reporting of the case after some Chinese media published lists of other prominent Chinese figures who received degrees from similar institutions, including government officials, executives and judges.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/90872/7033756.html

Home>>Life & Culture >> Society

Online marketing tricks rattle trust in Internet

08:12, June 22, 2010

Chinese Internet users may become more skeptical following a spate of reports exposing the profit-seeking manipulation of Internet hot topics that are designed to amuse the public, experts warned on Monday.

Many eye-catching hot topics on the Internet are not opinions of web surfers, as thought, but triumphant successes by professional Internet publicity agents taking advantage of the public’s attention to make money or seek fame for their clients, the Guangzhou-based Nan Fang Daily reported last Friday citing anonymous sources within the industry, the latest in recent extensive media stories.

The widespread wave of media criticism was led by the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China, the People’s Daily, which published, earlier in June, a series of investigative reports tracking down the masterminds behind Internet sensations in a bid to raise public concern over the emerging, yet disturbing, Internet marketing and publicity industry.

It has been estimated that at least thousands of small or large-sized Internet marketing companies are operating across the country, with large number of full-time or part-time employees hired to write postings that may catch the public’s attention or steer online opinions towards the interest of their clients.

According to the report by the People’s Daily, it usually follows a method of three steps to plot a case of Internet manipulation, starting from a large number of postings written by employees to trigger online debate, then causing public concern and media reports, and finally being rewarded with advertising revenues or other benefits.

“These publicity agents falsified or exaggerated so-called online hot topics and then, the sentiment and opinions of the public were ‘hijacked’,” said Wang Jun, a professor from the law school of Shanghai-based Fudan University.

A case in point is Luo Yufeng, a former supermarket cashier from Chongqing who shot to fame after posting a provocative and narcissistic advertisement for marriage on the Internet last year. Dubbed “sister phoenix” by Internet users, she became one of the top searches in China and was then frequently seen at various entertainment shows.

However, an Internet marketing company recently told media that it had engineered Luo’s becoming famous, including composing the ad and then posting it on various popular forums.

Luo had a plastic surgery in March, followed by postings and videos on the Internet that attracted millions of netizens, as well as media coverage. The drama was later exposed by the Nan Fang Daily as publicity campaign for a hospital, which paid 50,000 yuan ($7,300) for the Internet publicity and was organized by another marketing company in Guangzhou.

“Internet marketing is ultimately driven by money and benefits. The case of Luo Yufeng is a typical example,” Prof. Wang said.

Internet marketing was believed to have been born with the Internet industry. Interactive in nature and relatively less expensive, it has unique advantages compared with advertising via traditional media.

But experts said that as China has no specific laws or rules to regulate the booming industry, the cost of distributing exaggerated information online was low.

“Netizens have to deal with online information in a calm and rational way, so as not to become captives of Internet marketing,” Prof. Wang said.

China boasts 404 million Internet users, or one-third of the country’s population. An average of over 3 million postings and blogs are published on the Internet every day, according to the latest white paper on Chinese Internet usage.

Hu Yong, associate professor of journalism and communications from Peking University, urged traditional media, such as newspapers and TVs, not to blindly follow hot topics on the Internet before finding out if they have been posted by marketing agents.

“It might be a challenge for ordinary netizens to distinguish between hype and reality, but it is a necessity for journalists,” Hu said in an earlier interview with media.

Internet users interviewed by Xinhua also expressed some concerns, despite the fact that they were often amused by Internet sensations.

“It can be very misleading, especially to teenagers who might not be able to distinguish the true from the false. The industry needs to be regulated, otherwise its credbility may get impaired by those hyped-up sensations,” said a college student surnamed Gong in Beijing.

Even some insiders agreed that regulations are needed to help with the survival of the industry. Xiao Guo, co-founder of a new-born Internet marketing company, told Xinhua that the bottom line of his company was do “no evil.”

“Any kind of publicity is OK with us as long as it does not hurt others for no reason, but the market is indeed very chaotic,” Guo said.

Prof. Wang stressed that codes and principles of traditional businesses should apply equally to the Internet marketing business to safeguard the reliability of the Internet community from being impaired.

“It would be a shame if some Internet marketing agents continue to deliberately manipulate the online community. Their success is at the cost of the public trust,” Wang said.

Source: Xinhua