Microblog Democracy: "The Censor Next Door"

Sina Corp on Monday enacted a point system under which users of its Sina Weibo service are punished for posting content deemed harmful. The system, which in part encompasses Sina Weibo's more than 300 million registered user accounts, comes at a politically sensitive time in China.

The new system assigns each user an equal amount of points and gives its user base a policing role, allowing administrators to dock a user's point total depending on potential offenses pointed out by other users. The account of a person whose score falls to zero will be erased, according to Sina's website.