If the owner of a news site has a stake or likely interest in inflating the importance of a specific platform, would you trust that their reporting is entirely accurate? The story looks legitimate, but as others have pointed out, maybe there was a bigger migration to other platforms? All I can say is that if The Times owned entirely or in part something they reported on, I would not mind having this at least mentioned in the comments as a form of public disclosure.
Went digging a bit, and there seem to be at least some state ownership of Weibo through the China Internet Investment Fund [1]. Corporate structure and ownership in the PRC is far outside my area of expertise though.
If the facts are accurate and these identified people did in fact migrate to Weibo, does it matter?
> maybe there was a bigger migration to other platforms?
The article isn't at any point making the claim that all users are moving to Weibo.
It specifically mentions an identifiable set of artists, and then speaks about their experiences having migrated.
That's it
Are you claiming those facts or the reporting around them are in some way inaccurate?
Frankly, you seem to be looking for controversy where there is none. I'm as concerned about the behaviour of the CCP as anyone (and as an aside, the total disappearance of the Uighur story in the media is extremely concerning to me) but there's a point where it starts to veer into sinophobia.
> Frankly, you seem to be looking for controversy where there is none. […] there's a point where it starts to veer into sinophobia.
If that is the level of conversation you seek, I will stay out of your conversations. I was happy to learn something about state-owned news outlets, thought the article was perhaps overstating things a bit by using “flocking” for ~20 illustrators, and also found the overall tone of the article to be oddly celebrant as opposed to factual. Make of that what you will and I will try stay clear of you from now on.
