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Weibo Vows to Crack Down on Homophones and ‘Misspelled’ Words to “Stop Spread of Harmful Information”

Creative language targeted by Weibo. Is this great Chinese online tradition in danger of dying out?

Manya Koetse

Published

8 months ago

on

Chinese social media platform Weibo announced that it will crack down on the use of homophones and ‘misspelled words’ by netizens in order to create a more “healthy” online environment and stop the spread of “misinformation.”

The announcement became a trending topic on the platform on Wednesday, receiving over 180 million views.

Weibo Administrators posted the announcement on Weibo on July 13, writing:

“In order to create a clear and bright cyberspace, and to maintain a civilized and healthy social ecosystem, we will launch a focused regulation on the illegal behavior of using of homophone characters, variants of words, and other ‘misspelled words’ to spread harmful information. The main details are as follows:

1. We will increase our efforts to inspect and clean up the use of ‘misspelled characters’ to spread harmful information and other violations.
2. We will strengthen the platform’s mechanism of language [wording] supervision, and will refine the keyword identification model.
3. By establishing a positive incentive mechanism, we will reinforce the way to publicize (..) and guide platform users to use standard Chinese characters.

We call on the numerous netizens participating in community discussions here to express their viewpoints in a civilized way and to use standard characters. If you detect content that is in violation of this, we welcome you to report it and we will promptly take care of it.”

Chinese netizens often use Mandarin homophones of censored or sensitive terms in order to avoid detection by Weibo’s censor teams and keyword-matching algorithms so that they can still continue discussions of topics that would otherwise be blocked or taken offline.

The use of homophones on Chinese social media is as old as Chinese social media itself. One of the most well-known examples is the use of the 3-character phrase ‘cao ni ma’ (草泥马), which literally means ‘grass mud horse’, but is pronounced in the same way as the vulgar “f*ck your mother” (which is written with three different characters).

In the earlier years of Chinese social media, the ‘grass mud horse’ became some sort of mythical creature (神兽) that resembled an alpaca. Everyone knew that it was actually a big middle finger to the cyberspace authorities; it was netizens’ way of showing that they could use creative language as a weapon against censorship.

Throughout the years, homophones and other creative use of language have been a recurring tactic to go against censorship of sensitive topics and events.

This week, for example, some Chinese netizens started using the characters for the word ‘Helan’ (荷兰), meaning The Netherlands, which sounds very similar to the province ‘Henan’ (河南) to discuss the Henan bank protests. As reported by Leen Vervaeke in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, the replacement of the much-censored ‘Henan’ topic by the term ‘Holland’ sparked some affiliated code language, like Zhengzhou becoming ‘Amsterdam’ and bank deposits becoming ‘tulips.’

Although Weibo Administrators make it sound like the crack down on homophones is a new effort, it actually is not. In order to catch up with creative netizens, censors have since long been targeting ‘misspelled’ words and homophones.

Reported by Megan Garber as early as 2014 (quoting research by Jason Q. Ng), there were already 64 different Chinese terms related to ‘Tiananmen’ that were censored on Chinese social media by that time, including the characters ‘陆肆’ (lùsì) and the term ‘liu四’ which both sound like ‘liu si’ (六四), June 4, the day of the Tiananmen student protests of 1989.

“It’s becoming less and less fun around here,” some netizens responded to Weibo’s latest announcement. “What is there left to say? We’d better say nothing at all,” others wrote.

Seven months ago, the platform already announced that Weibo users can no longer have vulgar/slang terms in their usernames, or any other words that are deemed offensive.

Some netizens write that they fear that their “great tradition” of code language, part of China’s online culture and digital heritage, is at risk of dying out after the announced crackdown, but others vow to keep on ‘misspelling’ words: “Just because my educational level is so low and I don’t know all the right characters.”

“We’re just left with doing word puzzles from now on,” another Weibo user writes.

By Manya Koetse

 

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©2022 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

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Manya Koetse

Manya Koetse is the founder and editor-in-chief of whatsonweibo.com. She is a writer, public speaker, and researcher (Sinologist, MPhil) on social trends, digital developments, and new media in an ever-changing China, with a focus on Chinese society, pop culture, and gender issues. She shares her love for hotpot on hotpotambassador.com. Contact at manya@whatsonweibo.com, or follow on Twitter.

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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.

Manya Koetse

Published

1 week ago

on

March 12, 2023

By

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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Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. First-time commenters, please be patient – we will have to manually approve your comment before it appears.

©2023 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

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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.
Manya Koetse

Published

2 months ago

on

January 31, 2023

By

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

 

Get the story behind the hashtag. Subscribe to What’s on Weibo here to receive our newsletter and get access to our latest articles:

Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. First-time commenters, please be patient – we will have to manually approve your comment before it appears.

©2023 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

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