China’s Weibo shows user locations to combat ‘bad behaviour’

Move comes amid push by Beijing to ‘clean up’ the internet, but prompts privacy concerns among some users. Weibo, China‘s equivalent of Twitter, has told its users it will start to publish their IP locations on their account pages and when they post comments, in a bid to combat “bad behaviour” online. Weibo, which has more than 570 million monthly active users, said users’ IP addresses would be displayed under new settings which came into effect on Thursday and cannot be turned off by users. Beijing steps up efforts to ‘clean up’ the internet The settings are designed to “reduce bad behaviour 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,” it said in a notice. Weibo, which has been on the receiving end of several fines from China’s cyberspace regulator during the past year, frequently publishes notices about its efforts to combat bad behaviour online, including posting the names of accounts punished.