新浪微博整治刷榜行爲

Dozens of Chinese celebrities have been banned from appearing in social media giant Sina Weibo’s rankings following a government crackdown that has exposed the prevalence of fake lists on the platform.

數十位中國名人被禁止登上社交媒體巨頭新浪微博(Sina Weibo)熱搜榜，此前政府發起的整治行動曝光了該平臺普遍存在假榜問題。

Prominent users of the microblogging platform such as Wang Sicong, the socialite heir of billionaire Dalian Wanda chairman Wang Jianlin, have been given a three-month ban from its “hot searches” list, which is supposed to represent the most frequent searches of its 360m monthly active users.

這一微博平臺的知名用戶（比如大連萬達(Dalian Wanda)的億萬富翁董事長王健林之子王思聰）被禁止在三個月內進入“熱搜榜”。該榜單本應代表微博3.6億月活躍用戶搜索頻率最高的話題。

Weibo overtook Twitter — which is banned in China — in market capitalisation and user numbers last year. But its success has been threatened by Beijing’s increasing control of online discourse.

去年，新浪微博在市值和用戶數量上超越了Twitter（後者在中國被禁用）。但其成功受到北京方面日益嚴控網絡言論的威脅。

Regulators criticised Weibo at the weekend for “spreading misleading hype” and “obscene sexual content”, and closed down several functions on the platform for a week, including the hot searches list.

上週末，監管部門指責新浪微博“傳播炒作導向錯誤”和“低俗色情”等有害信息。作爲迴應，新浪微博將熱搜榜等多個功能板塊暫時下線一週。

A high ranking on the platform is important to celebrities and digital influencers, both to promote their work but also to increase their value to companies that pay them to promote products on the platform.

微博熱搜榜對於社會名人和數字影響者相當重要，讓他們一方面推介自己的其工作，另一方面爲那些出錢請他們在微博平臺上推廣產品的企業帶來增值。

Celebrities have also been accused of manipulating search rankings in order to push unfavourable stories about them further down the list.

某些名人還被指責爲了壓低有關自己的不利報道的位置而操縱搜索結果排序。

“Some companies and figures in the entertainment industry have?.?.?.?manipulated their rankings, and related to this, a black market has been created,” Sina Weibo said in a statement on Sunday, listing 38 terms banned from the hot searches list. Most of these were nicknames for celebrities, including the “The People’s Husband”, by which Wang Sicong is popularly known.

“有一些企業及娛樂行業從業者……開始進行有組織的刷榜行爲，社會上也出現了一些相關的互聯網黑產，”新浪微博在週日發表的聲明中表示。聲明列出了被禁止3個月內再上熱搜榜的38個熱搜詞，其中多數是名人外號，包括王思聰的知名外號“國民老公”。

Wang Sicong did not respond to a request for comment about the ban.

王思聰沒有回應對這一禁令置評的請求。

Many digital agencies, however, are still selling fake rankings on Weibo’s “hot topics” list, another prominent ranking on the platform which is similar to Twitter’s “trending topics” list of most cited hashtags.

然而，很多數字代理商仍然在出售新浪微博“熱門話題榜”的虛假排名。這是該平臺上與Twitter引用次數最多的話題榜單“熱門話題”(trending topics)類似的另一個重要榜單。

A search of business-to-business ecommerce portal yielded more than 800 results for Weibo hot topics, with companies offering to get a hashtag of choice into the platform’s top 10 trending topics for as little as Rmb8,000 ($1,260) by creating fake Weibo accounts.

在企業對企業電子商務門戶網站“豬八戒網”上搜索“微博話題”，可以得到超過800個搜索結果，最少花8000元人民幣（合1260美元）就可以讓營銷公司通過創建虛假微博賬戶，把相關話題標籤送入微博10大熱門話題之列。

Mark Natkin, of Marbridge Consulting in Beijing, said the practice of third-party service firms helping clients to “game the system” for a fee was “endemic” across China.

北京邁博瑞諮詢(Marbridge Consulting)的馬克?納特金(Mark Natkin)表示，第三方服務公司爲了獲取服務費幫助客戶“鑽空子”的操作在中國“普遍存在”。

A Weibo spokesperson said the company would work to “increase the investment of labour and technology, to improve management level of illegal and harmful content”.

新浪微博發言人表示，該公司將努力“增加技術和人力投入，提升對違法有害信息的管理水平”。