Very Strange Things Are Happening with Sina Weibo’s “Real-Name” Registration

We’ve been talking about real-name registration for microblogs in China for some time now, and today that day might finally be here. But has the real name regulation actually stopped anyone from posting? It doesn’t look like it.

This morning, I noticed my own Sina Weibo account had this message from Sina:

Hello, because you’re a user who filled out your identification information, we’ve already implemented real-name registration, and you can continue to use your microblog as usual. Thank you for supporting Sina.

This was quite a surprise to me, since I never filled out any identification information whatsoever. I’ve been very careful about not giving Sina anything, not even a phone number, because I don’t trust them and because I’ve wanted to test how this real name system would work. If Sina knows who I am, it’s not because of any information I gave them. And yet, here I am, registered. Bizarre.

I hopped on Twitter and Weibo to see what other people were reporting and found a number of other users reporting the same thing. Here are some posts from Weibo users about it:

榛子壳Renky:

I’m not a verified user, but I got [a message] saying real-name identity confirmed. It also told me to keep using weibo…the world is really crazy.

当锄和遇上当午: