Sina, the operator of China's massively popular microblogging service, Weibo, may introduce a 'credibility system' in which users who post rumours would be 'penalised' and their influence 'removed'.
No details were given.
Authorities have pressured Weibo's operators recently to curb online rumours, prompting fears among internet users the government was preparing to tighten its control on Weibo, which is similar to Twitter.
Charles Chao, president of Sina Corporation, said the company had been working in recent months on ways to curb 'untruthful rumours'. They 'posed serious challenges to the ability of the government to govern and also to suppliers of the [Weibo] platform like us', he told the China Digital Media Summit in Beijing yesterday.
A 'credibility system', Chao said, would be similar to how online shopping site Taobao rates its clients, but he did not elaborate on how it would work. He hoped the mechanism would 'allow valuable information to spread and penalise people who post or often post rumours'.
Chao said some users posted rumours on Weibo with 'malign motives', while limitations on the number of characters that can be posted in Weibo entries also makes it difficult for users to tell people the whole story.