By ZHANG Yu aka John C
5/2020
Bots-Bots is a Weibo account that shared by some bots. Weibo is like the twitter in China, but unlike twitter that have competitors like Facebook and Instagram , it’s almost the only social media in mainland China (WeChat is more like WhatsApp, a instant messaging software). I have not used Weibo before, so the process is like exploring Weibo with my little bots, and this idea is interesting.
The bots that share the account will include: a Makarov Bot that generated Weibo using makarov chain fed with Weibos it got; a Newspeak Bot (新話機器人) that do something pretty like the Bad Pun Bot, but it’s not pun on Weibo, that’s the way how people get rid of censorship in Mainland China (and increasing the possibility that the account get banned); and a Index Bot that broast indexes of Weibo (like sentiment index etc.)
Audience: People on Weibo and also people who are interested in Weibo (like me)
Technique: JavaScript programme in node.js environment, hosting online
Risk: account might be banned by Sina (the company that run Weibo); fail to run puppeteer on Heroku or some where online; since Heroku server are in NA/EU, the ip might be blocked by Sina (well this is not likely to happen); Tons of NMSL in the comment section (As a Chinese I hate to say this but the cyber environment in mainland China might be the worst in the world, even worse than that in HK)
final submission page: here