Image by Oiwan Lam Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, had recently updated its application to show individual users’ geolocation data, citing the need to prevent disinformation and rumours. Despite privacy concerns, the location data has unexpectedly exposed the whereabouts of pro-government opinion leaders and patriotic trolls. Though the platform has been showing user IP information since March, the latest application upgrade launched on April 28 will show users’ locations whenever they publish on Weibo. The company’s announcement said that the change was to protect user…
