(Yicai Global) Aug. 23 – Sina Weibo, a Chinese social media platform with over 500 million monthly active users, has sought to refute netizens' suspicions of the commercial nature of its trending content list.

Weibo's top list of 50 topics is formed based on users' real behavior, the Beijing-based operator of the microblogging platform said on its official Weibo account.

Picking Content 

The company shed some light on how it chooses the top content to show to its users. 

An algorithm calculates the popularity of all buzzwords based on the volumes of search, posting, interaction, reads, and other factors once per minute, said the firm. The system has a feature to fight the " astroturfers", who were paid commentators and spam.

When an advertisement is showing in the top 50 list, it is marked with a special label of commerce, the firm explained. Ads are excluded from the mechanism that searches for keywords.

Limiting Entertainment 

Meanwhile, Sina Weibo said it started restricting controversial social content in the first half to "promote healthier search list ecology". A major negative social news and a single entertainment star can only occupy one topic on the list.

Articles published by official news outlets in China are prioritized when talking about public emergencies. Keywords related to information that is confirmed to be rumors by government agencies or authoritative media outlets will be stopped from spreading immediately.

In June 2020, the company was ordered to refrain from updating its top search list for a week to rectify after removing content related to an alleged extramarital affair of Jiang Fan, ex-president of online marketplaces Taobao and Tmall owned by Sina Weibo's shareholder Alibaba Group Holding.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi