Mandatory Use Of Original Name On Social Media, China's New Rules Generate Pros And Cons

China suppresses anonymity across social media (photo: dock. pexels)

JAKARTA - China made a new policy that led to many pros and cons. This rule requires social media users to use their real names.

Quoting from Reuters, all self-media or independent accounts across Chinese social media must display the user's original information. This rule applies to accounts with followers above 500,000.

This new policy applies to all social media platforms, including the Baidu Search engine, Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, WeChat, Bilibili website, Weibo, to Xiaohongshu e-commercesocial applications.

Through these strict restrictions, the Chinese government is trying to suppress the actions of these large accounts so that they are more careful with their actions and said while playing social media.

However, this policy did not respond well. Many are worried about the problem of doxing or the dissemination of information about personal identity such as home addresses to personal phone numbers.

In addition to worrying about easier spread of doxing, many think that social media accounts are the privacy of their users. Many also disagree because anonymity is a right for users.

So far, some of the big social media have responded. Weibo CEO Wang Gaofei said that this policy would not be applied to users under 500,000 followers. However, they will target accounts with more than 1 million followers.

Meanwhile, Douyin's owner stated that they would not ask for anything other than the user's real name and the person who can see this real name is just a user with a verified account.