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 Baidu Tieba website in 2023 (Chinese version) | |
Type of site | Bulletin Board Service |
|---|---|
| Available in | Chinese,Vietnamese,Japanese |
| Headquarters | Beijing,Haidian 10, Shangdi Street, Baidu Building, China |
| Owner | Baidu |
| Created by | Robin Li |
| URL | tieba wapp |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Compulsory |
| Launched | December 1, 2003; 22 years ago (2003-12-01) |
Baidu Tieba (Chinese:百度贴吧;pinyin:bǎidù tiēbā;lit. 'Baidu Post Bar') is a Chineseonline forum hosted by the Chinese web services companyBaidu. Baidu Tieba was established on December 3, 2003 as anonline community that heavily integrates Baidu's search engine. Users may search for a topic of interestforum known as a "bar" which will then be created if it does not exist already.[1] It has been described as similar toReddit, with the bars comparable to subreddits.[2][3] The forum had over 300 million monthly active users during its peak in the 2010s, but the number of active users had declined by nearly 90% from its peak by the early 2020s.[4] The number of its total registered user accounts exceeds 1.5 billion.[5] As of June 6, 2021, Baidu Tieba has 23,254,173 communities.[6]
Baidu Tieba usesforums called bars (which are analogous toReddit subreddits[3]) for users to socially interact. The slogan of Baidu Tieba is "Born for your interest" (Chinese: 为兴趣而生). These bars covered a variety of topics, such ascelebrities,sports,science,films,comics, andbooks. More than one billion posts have been published in these bars. Some Baidu Tieba bars are large enough that they are comparable in influence to independent forums, while others are much smaller, perhaps only having a few users, and more resemble a personalblog.[7]
In many cases the topic of discussion on Baidu Tieba forums has little to do with the title of the bar.[8]
According toAlexa Internet in 2007, traffic to Baidu Tieba then made up more than 10% of the total traffic to Baidu properties.[9]
Every bar can have up to threemasters, thirty vice-masters, and ten video-masters to manage uploaded videos. Users can post, at most, ten pictures and one video quoted from certain broadcast websites. Users cannot edit any published posts. However, users can delete their own published posts and comments from other users on their posts. Beyond regular text posts, Baidu Tieba allows for the use ofpolls. Every bar has its own 2GB space for members to upload videos. If a bar is ranked within the top 500 of the official rankings, it has its own album.[citation needed]
Like Reddit, Baidu Tieba forms are moderated by unpaid volunteers, who are allowed to set the rules of the bar, remove comments and posts considered disruptive, among other functions.[7][10] Moderators can be removed by Baidu staff at will for reasons such as lack of activity, failure to grow the forum, or for exploiting their moderator position for commercial gain.[8]
Prior to 2010, Baidu Tieba allowed anonymous posting, displaying only theIP address of the poster. Since then, users are required to have aregistered account in order to post on bars. It is illegal in China to publish rumors which "threaten the social order", a crime punishable by up to 7 years jail.[11] The onus is on service providers to police and remove such content. Baidu Tieba is no exception and warns users against the dangers of spreading false information, suggesting it is done for notoriety as well as commercial and political gain.[12]
Baidu Tieba also has a consumer-to-consumere-commerce sale function, which had led it to be likened toCraigslist.[13]
By 2021 Tieba had launched a feature allowing approved users to uploadshort-form video content.[4]
Baidu Tieba was released to the public around December 1, 2003.[8]
At its peak Baidu Tieba hosted numerous passionate fan communities dedicated to various topics, such asanime series.[8] During the summer of 2005, the popularity of Baidu Tieba was buoyed by discussion surrounding the second season of the popular singing competitionSuper Girl,[8][4] with Baidu Tieba members organizing activity on Tieba to attract votes for their favourite contestants.[4] A prominent feature of Baidu Tieba's culture is "forum bombing", where members of a bar/subform spam other Tieba bars with meaningless or empty to posts to disrupt them.[7] Conflict between different Baidu Tieba communities/bars supporting rivalSuper Girl contestants resulted in efforts to spam/disrupt rival contestants bars over the next several years.[8]
One of the notable and popular forums/bars on Baidu Tieba is theLi Yi Bar, originally created to mock Chinese footballerLi Yi in 2004 though it eventually broadened its topic scope. It had gained over 6 million users by 2017, and became for known for its distinctive culture and slang,[14] as well as its campaigns to flood/spam rival Tieba bars[15][7] and social media pages of people and organizations considered to oppose the Chinese government.[16][17]
Tieba became notable on the Chinese internet for its numerous controversies.[18] In 2008 users and moderators of the Tieba bar dedicated to the video gameAudition Online was accused of mocking the victims of the2008 Sichuan earthquake, resulting in the forum being temporarily locked by Baidu. That same year, the Tieba bar dedicated to the South Korean boybandTVXQ was bombed after rumors that one of their members had assaulted someone, resulting in the forum having to be made approved members-only for posting.[7]
In 2009, the viral Chinese internet meme "Jia Junpeng" spawned from a post on theWorld of Warcraft bar on Baidu Tieba.[8]
In 2012, Baidu Tieba updated its interface, switching from a simple reply-by-sequence user interface, into a more complicated reply-in-same-floor one. Along with the new interface, new functionalities such as rankings, more expressive pictures, and allowing administrators to change the background images of Tieba, were also implemented.[citation needed]
By 2015, Baidu Tieba had over 1 billion registered accounts and over 300 million active users.[4]
Despite the popularity of Baidu Tieba, for a long time up until 2014 Baidu Tieba was not profitable to operate for Baidu, resulting in Baidu searching for ways to increase revenue from the platform. In 2016, Baidu Tieba came under major controversy for Baidu's practice, which began in 2014, of selling moderator rights to individual forums without the consent of users or the original moderators. In January 2016, it was reported that a forum dedicated to the diseasehaemophilia was sold by Baidu to a hospital, which removed the original moderation team, and used the forum to post advertising, removing posts complaining about the change. Later that year, Baidu pledged to stop selling the moderation rights to forums.Sixth Tone wrote that selling off the moderation rights for bars made relatively little revenue for Baidu and resulted in many boards becoming "advertising spaces for commercial ventures".[10]
In 2017, Baidu Tieba was investigated by the Beijing Municipal Cyberspace Administration because users were allegedly using it to "spread terror-related material, rumours and obscenities".[19] It has previously been summoned by the Ministry of Public Security for concerns including "inadequate security management and prominent issues such as illegal information involving firearms and explosives, the sale of citizens' personal information, and pornography".[20] In 2018, a man used Baidu Tieba to solicit ahitman for an unsuccessful plot to murder his wife.[21] A 2025Vice News article stated that Baidu Tieba "was often used for criminality",[22] while a 2021 journal article stated that Tieba was known as a place where "victims can share their experiences of being victimized and warn other potential victims".[23]
Baidu Tieba began to decline in traffic beginning in 2012. By 2019, its traffic had declined substantially relative to its heyday, having only tens of million rathers than hundreds of million of active users, with other platforms likeWeibo,WeChat,Douyin,Bilibili,Xiaohongshu andZhihu having gained prominence.[8][4][18] By this time, the homepage of the website was "dominated by advertisements and live streams". On May 13, 2019, topics posted in Baidu Tieba before January 1, 2017 were hidden.[8] A Baidu official said that the topics are hidden temporarily due to "system maintenance".[24] By 2021, it had lost nearly 90% of its userbase compared to 2015, down to only 37.43 million monthly active users. This decline has been attributed to several factors, including competition from rival platforms, heavy-handed moderation by Baidu administrators, excessive demands of volunteer moderators (who at one point were demanded by Baidu to fulfil "a 2% daily increase in daily forum visitors, a 3% daily increase in the number of new topics, a 5% daily increase in the number of replies, and a 1% daily increase in check-ins." in bars/forums they moderated or face removal from their moderator position), and excessive commercialisation.[4]
In 2023, the Tieba bar dedicated to controversial livestreamerSun Xiaochuan was subject to a "special cleanup campaign" by Baidu following allegations of misogynistic comments made by some of its users.[25]
Baidu Postbar is the international version of Baidu Tieba.
In order to expand its commercial domain, Baidu Postbar has been introduced to several countries listed below:
In late 2011, the Japanese version of Baidu Postbar was shut down.
Since May 2015, all logins are disabled on the Vietnamese version of Baidu Postbar.[citation needed]
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