Weibo Launches New Rules Against Spam, Calls Out Spammers Publicly

In the wake of high-profile accidents, pundits have fretted about the danger of rumors on Weibo, but for the average user, spam, ad bots, and other fake crap are more common problems. Today, Sina launched a new page informing users of new rules and publicizing major cases of rule infractions and other swindles users may want to know about.

The rules laid out on the page are very simple:

1. If a user’s followers are identified as posting “abnormal” content by Sina’s anti-spam department, those followers will be removed.
2. Accounts that post advertising content [spam] will have those posts quickly deleted.
3. Depending on the severity of infraction, Sina may close the accounts of violators to new followers, prevent them from posting messages, or even shut down the accounts entirely.

The page also has a series of notices for users about scams and other rule-violating content. At the moment, for example, the site warns visitors that a specific “iPad giveaway” is actually a hoax, and calls out several users by name for posting spam. Given that there are already five pages of these warnings, it’s pretty clear Weibo has a spam problem — not that anyone should be surprised to hear that.

The new regulations sound fairly strict, so if they’re carefully enforced, hopefully we’ll be seeing less spam on our Weibo accounts in the future. Here’s hoping!

(And in the meantime, don’t trust people who say they’ll give you free iPads. Come on, people, that’s internet 101.)

[Via Techweb]