In China, hundreds of millions of people use WeChat not only as a communication tool but also as a major source of news and knowledge. Naturally, the messaging app, called Weixin in China, is also a hotbed for suspicious rumors.
Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., the developer of WeChat, says it is trying to help the app's users verify whether certain rumors they see online are true or false.
This week, an official WeChat account called Rumor Filter, operated by Tencent, added a new feature that it says could make it easier for people to check the veracity of social-media information. When a user sends a chat message -- a phrase or sentence stating what the rumor is -- to the RumorFilter account, it aims to give an auto reply that clarifies whether that rumor is true.
Rumor Filter's short instruction manual for the new feature contains a sample question: "Is a crayfish an insect?" -- which gets a lengthy reply explaining why a crayfish isn’t an insect. But because the feature is a simple auto-reply function, most messages that don't match certain keywords and phrases, Tencent says, either get no reply or a reply saying "there is no relevant information."
China Real Time found that it offered responses mainly about recent myths related to public-health scares.
For instance, a query about online rumors that fast-food chain KFC uses abnormal chickens with an excessive number of wings and legs prompted a reply clarifying that the rumor stemmed from manipulated photos and that experts say chickens with more than two wings are hard to keep alive. KFC filed a lawsuit last year against three Chinese media companies for spreading false information about its products.
The feature also refuted rumors related to diseases such as HIV, and a myth about parasites in pork that can't be killed off by boiling or frying.
Chinese authorities have in recent years grappled with how to regulate social-media platforms that serve as popular venues for discussion and debate in a country where authorities keep a tight grip on the flow of information.
A survey released this month by an institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences showed that WeChat is now a bigger channel for online rumors than other social networks such as the Weibo microblogging service, in part because people use WeChat more often than any other social apps.
Other studies have warned that rumors circulated on WeChat, where people typically communicate with friends and acquaintances rather than strangers, are more difficult to refute than rumors spread on microblogging platforms such as Weibo where users post comments to wider audiences.
A CASS study last year said that WeChat intercepts “rumors” as many as 2.1 million times a day, typically in posts on food and personal safety, disease, personal-health regimes, fraud, finance and parenting techniques.
Tencent says it launched the Rumor Filter account in 2014 to help WeChat users distinguish rumors from facts. The account occasionally posts articles that try to determine the authenticity of some of the most widely circulated rumors online.
For example, a Rumor Filter article posted earlier this month talked about a blog post being shared by many WeChat users that came with the headline "Greedy Glass Makers Cause 99% of Nearsightedness Problems." The blog post argued that wearing glasses all the time would make people even more nearsighted. The Rumor Filter article said that this blog post's information is false and glasses don't make nearsightedness worse, citing a BBC article.
However, the idea of distinguishing rumors from facts becomes complicated in a country where internet censorship and online propaganda are part of everyday life. Articles posted on Rumor Filter's account so far haven't contained any online rumors that might be seen as remotely political, and China Real Time failed to find clarity when asking the app about politically sensitive rumors.
The account's introduction page says, "we filter rumors, protect the truth and spread positive energy."