Sina Corp.’s Weibo, China’s Twitter, has until March 16 to acquire all their users information to comply with the government’s standards.

Back in December, the Chinese government ordered the microblogging site to obtain users’ name and mobile numbers and verify them.  If users aren’t able to provide them, they will no longer be able to post stories and have to settle with just reading other people’s posts.

“In order to standardize the management of the development of the micro-blog service, to maintain the order of the network communication, information security, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of the users of Internet Information Services unit and micro-blog, to meet the public demand for information on the Internet to promote the orderly development of the Internet, health, according to Telecommunications Regulations of the People’s Republic of China, Internet Information Services management approach and other laws, regulations, rules, combined with the actual situation of the city, the enactment of this provision,” said the order.

This move by the government came from recent false stories that were spread using the micro-blogging site such as the Kim Jon-un, North Korea’s was assassinated during his stay at the embassy in Beijing, and the claim that people were using syringes containing HIV-infected blood in Beijing in attacks.

The Chinese government recognizes the influence of social media, so instead of banning them or putting restrictions on the sites, they resorted to verifying the actual end users.  The logic behind this move is to make sure that people are held responsible for their posts, minimizing the number of false stories to be spread.

BBC Monitoring’s study suggested that the Chinese authorities wanted to use Weibo to “maintain social stability” rather than undermine the platform.

It’s part of a larger discussion around social networking accountability, and it’s one that even Twitter’s had to address.  The popular micro-blogging platform has its own verification system for profiles seeking to set themselves apart from imitation or “unofficial” accounts, sending a message to the public that they can be trusted.  Google+ also had to consider early on how they’d handle user account verification, particularly as they anticipated the search integration alongside their burgeoning social network.

This will only continue to rise as an issue for consideration as social media data is incorporated into more types of analysis, metrics, semantics and search.  The proliferation of social media has become a phenomenon all its own, and deriving mechanisms around the validity of that data has implications far beyond the spreading of false information.