China's Version of Twitter Starts Publicly Sharing Every User's Location

pcmag.com:

Imagine using Twitter, but every time you tweet, your location is also posted for all to see. That's what Weibo users in China are waking up to today.

Weibo is effectively Twitter for China, and it's extremely popular with over 570 million active users signed up to the service. However, some may reconsider how active they are after Weibo decided to start publishing a user's location every time they post a message.

As Reuters reports, Weibo implemented this change to "reduce bad behavior such as impersonating parties involved in hot topic issues, malicious disinformation and traffic scraping, and to ensure the authenticity and transparency of the content disseminated."

For Weibo users, this new policy means that every time they publish a new post, the province or municipality where they are located when they tapped the publish button will be displayed. The IP location will also be displayed on their account page. For anyone posting from outside of China, the country of the user's IP will be displayed instead.

Thankfully the location shared publicly isn't very specific, but it's mandatory information sharing and a permanent addition to the service. Weibo hopes that it will help to maintain "a healthy and orderly atmosphere of discussion" while "protecting the rights and interests of users to quickly obtain real and effective information." As you'd expect, some users are not happy about their location being shared, while others think it's a good step to help limit the spread of rumors and "disgusting content."

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