DIGITAL LIFE

Chinese news aggregator rewards Internet users who unveil rumors

Dubbed '100', the project was launched on Monday and will award the top 100 articles that unmask rumors. The application is managed by Bytedance, based in Beijing, one of the most prized startups in the world.The "cleanup" campaign targets any content considered to be inappropriate, including sensitive political news, celebrity rumors targeted, reports of violent incidents and jokes considered to be unpleasant, according to the SCMP.Earlier this month, the Chinese media regulator said people could be rewarded with up to 600,000 yuan for reporting pornographic and "illegal" online or print content as of December 1.The People's Daily, the official Communist Party of China newspaper, warned in October content makers that "rumors can not hold people's minds," and appealed to all Internet users not to create rumors or to believe in speculation .Jinri Toutiao, which means 'today's headlines', was launched in 2012 as China's first news application based on artificial intelligence algorithms to recommend different news to different readers.The popular application, however, did not escape the Chinese "clean-up" campaign, as it was removed from all application platforms for two weeks due to "obscene content" in April, the SCMP said in today's issue.During this period, Bytedance founder and chief executive Zhang Yiming wrote a public apology that promised "self-reflection."Toutiao garnered fourth place in the highest-performing apps ranking in the iOS apps store in China last month, according to app research firm Appie Annie.
According to the SCMP, the Chinese government's crackdown on online content has put more pressure on platform operators to hire more people to monitor and remove content in real time.
For the rest, Zhang will have promised to strengthen his censorship team from six thousand to ten thousand people in April.
Toutiao announced that he has intercepted more than 500,000 articles containing rumors and banned 9,026 content that has spread rumors since May, through the use of human censors and artificial intelligence technology.
The company also reported that it has joined the University of Michigan to utilize artificial intelligence Technologies.


Lusa