中国打击网络“刷单、刷好评”动真格了？

中国打击网络“刷单、刷好评”动真格了？

中国电子商务中充斥着虚假销售和评论，阿里巴巴等互联网公司已同意对政府机构共享数据打击网络“炒信”行为，但也引发了关于隐私安全的担忧。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

eliminate消除；排除[ɪ'lɪmɪneɪt]

merchant商人，批发商；店主['mɜːtʃ(ə)nt]

rhetoric花言巧语的['retərɪk]

integrity完整；正直[ɪn'tegrɪtɪ]

incentive动机；刺激[ɪn'sentɪv]

deputy代理人；副的；代理的['depjʊtɪ]

surveillance监督；监视[sə'veɪl(ə)ns]

China tech groups to share data with state in online fraud battle（510words）

By Charles Clover and Sherry Fei Ju in Beijing

China's largest internet companies have agreed to share data with government authorities in an effort to eliminate fake online reviews for services such as taxi rides and restaurants.

Alibaba,Tencent,JD.com,58.com,Didi Chuxing and Baidu have all agreed to support the initiative,which aims to improve consumer trust online in a country where faking sales and reviews is commonplace in ecommerce. The practice,known in Chinese as“brushing”,is used by merchants to gain prominent placement and more sales.

The National Development and Reform Commission,a government agency,said on Tuesday the agreement to fight“credit manipulation”would be part of a larger project announced last year to create a national“social credit system”aimed at promoting online trustworthiness.

“This [brushing] industry is becoming bigger and bigger,causing increasing danger to the healthy development of e-commerce business,”Zhao Chenxin,an NDRC spokesperson,said at a press conference Tuesday.

Despite the pro-consumer rhetoric,there were worries that tightening rules around online reviews and transactions would also help the government create more accurate online profiles of Chinese citizens. The NDRC would be compiling a“credit blacklist”as part of a“joint disciplinary scheme”,one official acknowledged.

The“social credit”plan published by the government last year already has the aim of using algorithms and big data to rate not just citizens’creditworthiness but their overall“honesty”and“trustworthiness”by as early as 2020.

“The incentive scheme for integrity and joint disciplinary scheme for dishonesty is an important part of China’s social credit system’s top-level establishment,as well as a key starting point to improve the social credit system,”said Zhou Min,deputy director of the NDRC’s state information centre.

Privacy advocates fear the social credit system is actually designed for mass surveillance. So far,however,the government’s efforts have been largely theoretical.

A draft of the plan said it would“use encouragement”to increase trust online,and outlines the objective to raise“the honest mentality and credit levels of the entire society”.

The new system depends on China’s largest internet companies sharing user data,although no details of what would be provided to the government have been released. One employee of a large internet company admitted that“this is mostly driven by our government relations people and we don’t have any details”.

Baidu,China’s largest search engine,described the agreement as an“anti-credit manipulation alliance”between corporations and the government.

Alibaba,the ecommerce group,said in a statement:“We believe the joint effort will benefit consumers to combat fraudulent activities involving false transactions and reviews.”

The NDRC said it would first focus on combating fake reviews on“Singles Day”sales on November 11,China’s largest online shopping day that last year posted $14.3bn in revenues.

“At the time of this year’s Singles Day sale,the emphasis on the issues of business integrity and the improvement of social credit is a great opportunity to defend consumer rights and also a reminder to merchants,”Cheng Xiaobo,president of China Reform Daily,the NDRC’s official newspaper,said at Tuesday’s press conference.