China Digital
Alipay Says Sorry After App Turns Into ‘Girls Gone Wild’ Platform
Online payment app Alipay triggered controversy in China this week when it launched a new group chat feature that soon turned into a soft porn place. CEO Peng Lei now apologizes
It was not long after Alipay (also referred to as ‘China’s Paypal’) launched its new group chat feature “Circles” on November 27 that the function sparked huge controversy on Chinese social media.
Although the “Circles” function was initially intended to make the Alipay app a more versatile platform, it was soon flooded with sexy pictures by female users.
Some app groups soon turned into a platform where hundreds of women posted sexy pictures tempting men to spend some digital money.
The Alipay app, that is owned by Ant Financial Services (蚂蚁金服), previously already allowed users to interact with each other; besides just sending payments, users could also send each other texts, pictures, voice messages, short videos or their location.
Various features within the Alipay app (What’s on Weibo).
The new social feature “Circles” (生活圈) now also makes it possible for users to interact in categorical groups. But here’s the catch: some of these groups only allow specific users (like ‘female college students’) to post, and only allows people with a high credit score to comment.
By limiting the chat groups to allowing users of a certain sex (female) to post, while only allowing other users above a certain credit score to comment/interact, Alipay’s new feature became an overnight success, but perhaps not in the way it hoped to be.
Some app groups, such as the one named ‘Campus Diary’ (校园日记), soon turned into a platform where hundreds of women posted sexy pictures to tempt men or other users with a high credit score to spend some of their digital money.
The incident led to outrage on Sina Weibo, which was especially caused by Chinese businessman Wang Sicong (王思聪).
“O2O prostitution is f*cking amazing!”
On November 27, Wang Sicong, who has over 21.4 million followers on Weibo, posted: ““O2O [online to offline] prostitution is f-cking amazing.” He also made a word joke with an Alipay logo saying: “Pay the pimp” (translation by Quartz/Huang).
Weibo post by Wang Sicong of November 27.
Wang’s post was the beginning of a social media storm, where many netizens were upset that the finance app had turned into a raunchy place: “Our internet is controlled by scum!”, one person said.
Others were also upset that they were not allowed to join social groups because of their sex (“Only women are allowed to post in this group”) or because their credit score was too low: “Alipay won’t let me post! What is this supposed to mean?”
“How could Alipay have been so stupid?”
On November 29, Chinese media reported that Ant Financial’s director Peng Lei (彭蕾) apologized for the controversy caused by Alipay’s new feature and that the most controversial groups had immediately been removed from Circles.
In a public statement, Peng admitted that Alipay had made a “mistake”, and said that the past two days had been the “most difficult” in the 7-year-long work for Alipay.
In the evening of November 29 (Beijing time), many Weibo users reported that the ‘Circles’ function had been entirely closed down.
“How could Alipay have been so stupid?”, many netizens wonder.
“Some friends of my added many new Alipay friends over the past two days to heighten their credit score so that they could comment on college girls,” one Weibo user said.
The height of one’s Alipay credit score, named Sesame Credit Score (芝麻信用分), is based on various factors, such as one’s financial standing, purchases, address, number of friends, etc. The ‘Campus Diary’ group only allowed users with a credit score over 750 points to join, which apparently made some users frantically look for new friends to heighten their score.
Inviting friends to Alipay will heighten your credit score.
“This shows that there are many prostitutes among college students,” one Weibo commenter said: “You should track down those who exposed themselves.”
There are also some who don’t see what all the fuss is about: “They [Alipay] are just creating new business opportunities for college students!”
– By Manya Koetse
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©2016 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.
China Digital
Meet Ren Xiaorong, People’s Daily AI Virtual News Anchor
Although their functions are still limited, AI news anchors such as Ren Xiaorong are a sign of the future.
Ren Xiaorong (任小融) joined the Chinese state media outlet People’s Daily as a virtual presenter/news anchor this week.
Ren Xiaorong is the AI-powered host of an app allowing users to ask questions related to the Two Sessions, the annual plenary sessions of the National People’s Congress and of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference that have been taking place this week.
Through the People’s Daily app, you can ask Ren Xiaorong to tell you more about various topics covered during the Two Sessions, including education, epidemic prevention, housing, employment, environmental protection, and many other issues.
According to the introduction video launched by People’s Daily, Ren is also available to discuss other news topics people would like to know more about.
Ren Xiaorong is interactive to a certain (very limited) extent; users can select the topics they want to learn more about, but the app does not yet allow to ask specific questions.
A related hashtag went viral on Weibo on Sunday (#人民日报AI虚拟主播#), triggering discussions on the use of virtual news presenters.
Ren Xiaorong is not the first People’s Daily virtual news anchor. In 2019, the very first AI-powered presenter was unveiled at the 2019 Big Data Expo (#人民日报首位AI虚拟主播#). Guo Guo (果果), aka Little Guo Guo (小果果), was based on the real-life Chinese reporter Guo Xinyu (果欣禹).
Guo Guo and Guo Xinyu
China’s state media outlets Xinhua, Beijing TV, Hunan TV, and CCTV previously also unveiled their own AI-powered virtual news anchors at a time when China’s virtual idol market started to explode.
During the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, there was also a virtual host and China’s first AI sign language presenter.
Although news media outlets have started experimenting with virtual presenters for some time now, some netizens are still not convinced about the actual purpose of having virtual TV hosts and news anchors, especially when their AI-driven interactive functions are still limited.
Weibo blogging account ‘Media People Online’ (@传媒人在线) writes: “I’ve never really understood this, is there a shortage of broadcasting talent, or are AI anchors better at it? Why would you use a robot to broadcast the news? Are you spending so much money on an AI presenter just to show technological progress?”
But other bloggers (@夏日之阳新闻传播考研) think that virtual anchors could improve the quality and availability of news, since they could broadcast around the clock while saving on manpower, alleviating the pressure on newsrooms.
Whether people approve of virtual news readers or not, most agree Ren Xiaorong, along with her virtual colleagues, is a harbinger of the digitalization of the media at a time when artificial intelligence has already come to play a pivotal role in everyday activities.
Want to see Ren Xiaorong at work? Click this link on mobile.
By Manya Koetse
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China Digital
U.S. Embassy Launches WeChat Stickers Featuring Cartoon Eagle
A Weibo hashtag about the eagle stickers, that feature some phrases previously used by China’s Foreign Ministry, has now been taken offline.
On January 30, the American Embassy in China announced the launch of its very own series of social media gifs, a special ’emoticon collection’ (表情包), featuring a little, somewhat silly cartoon eagle.
The U.S. Embassy launched the eagle series on WeChat and also announced the series on their Weibo account, writing that the eagle made its first public appearance in light of the festivities surrounding the Chinese New Year.
The eagle is called “Xiaomei” or “Little Mei” (鹰小美). The ‘mei’ is part of 美国 Měiguó, Chinese for the ‘United States,’ but měi also means beautiful and pretty.
The American embassy issued a total of 16 different animated stickers, and they’re intended to be used on Tencent’s WeChat, where users can download all kinds of different emoticons or stickers to use in conversations.
WeChat users often use many different animated stickers in conversations to express emotions, make jokes, or increase the festive mood (by sending out celebratory New Year’s or birthday etc gifs). Users can download new and preferred sticker packages through the app’s sticker section.
One sticker shows Xiaomei with a festive decoration with 福 (fú) for blessing and prosperity, wishing everyone a happy start to the Chinese Lunar New Year. There are also stickers showing the texts “happy winter,” “hi,” and “thank you.”
Another sticker in the series that has triggered some online responses is one that shows the eagle with a surprised look, wiping its eyes, with the words “wait and see” written above. The Chinese expression used is 拭目以待 shìmù yǐdài, to eagerly wait for something to happen, literally meaning to wipe one’s eyes and wait.
This same expression was often used by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian (赵立坚) during press conferences, and he also used it in 2022 when responding to questions related to Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan and how the Chinese military would respond (e.g. he first used “wait and see” in the context of waiting to see if Pelosi would actually dare to go to Taiwan or not). But Zhao also used “please wait and see” (请大家拭目以待) when foreign reporters asked him how China would respond to the announced U.S. boycott of the Winter Olympics in 2021.
The Little Mei emoji triggered the most responses as some netizens felt it was meant as a sneer to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
One of Little Mei’s quotes is also “remain calm” (保持冷静 bǎochí lěngjìng), which was – perhaps coincidentally – also often used by Zhao in the context of the war in Ukraine and to refer to other international conflicts or tensions (“all parties should remain calm”). The animated sticker also has olive branches growing behind the eagle.
It recently became known that Zhao, who became known as the ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomat, was removed as the Foreign Ministry spokesperson and was moved to the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs.
Especially in the context of Zhao leaving his post, some wondered why the U.S. Embassy would use phrases related to his press conferences for their new emoticons.
Although some people suggested the WeChat stickers were not launched in China with good intentions, others appreciated the humorous visuals and felt it was funny. Some also joked that America was infiltrating Chinese social media with its cultural export (“文化输出”), and others wondered if they could not also introduce some other stickers with more Chinese Foreign Ministry popular phrases on them.
A hashtag related to the topic made its rounds on Weibo on Tuesday (#美驻华大使馆上线鹰小美表情包#), but the topic suddenly was taken offline on Tuesday evening local time, along with some of the media reports about the remarkable WeChat series.
The WeChat stickers are still available for downloading by scanning the QR code below through WeChat.
By Manya Koetse , with contributions by Miranda Barnes
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