BringBackValko

This entry has been passed around as proof that Papergames is on trial. The article does not say that.

When I posted it I already disclosed that Sina was only hosting the piece, that the original publisher was listed as 点财网 (Diancai Wang, a finance news portal), and that the author carried the tag 商讯 (shangxun), which is what Chinese platforms put on paid or sponsored content rather than independent reporting.

What I found later is that the same text is sitting on more than one outlet, and they disagree about who wrote it. The copy I read credits Diancai Wang as its source, meaning someone else wrote it and they are reproducing it. The copy on ZOL is marked 原创 (yuanchuang), original, meaning ZOL says it wrote it. An article has one author. We cannot tell which label is wrong and we do not need to, because the point is that the same text is circulating across outlets with a different credit on each one. That is what a paid placement looks like: a list of outlets is booked, they all run the same piece, and each tags it however it likes. If this were reporting, one outlet would have done the work and the rest would be citing it. The headline also matches a piece on another site that appears in leaked admin screenshots as one fans paid to place.

On the court line, the article says a related party filed suit over certain public statements and that a court accepted the case for filing. Accepting a case for filing means the paperwork was received, not that anything was decided. The sentence opens with 据悉 (juxi), which is the phrase Chinese press uses when the information has no named source, and it closes by saying that as of publication the case had not gone to trial. There is no court named, no case number, no parties and no date.

The article also states that posting in blocks only works as a lead and cannot on its own establish organised content or a 水军 (shuijun), literally water army, meaning posters paid to flood a topic. It goes on to say the available public material is not enough to prove a paid water army or commercial competitors being involved.

ZOL copy: news.zol.com.cn/1218/12189917.html