Last October, China officially ordered a crackdown on content creators. Influencers must now prove real-world qualifications before posting on topics such as law, medicine, or finance. Chinese platforms like Douyin, WeChat and Weibo are required to check for legitimate degrees or certifications.

Offenders dispensing advice without credentials risk fines of up to100,000 yuan. Great news in a time where the organic word-of-mouth has given way to viewer count. Unqualified recommendations are fine and well-concerning which new restaurant to check out. Not so much for high-stakes decisions.

Yet, it’s not a problem unique to social media.

Celebrity endorsements still sway the masses. Do we genuinely want to, borrowing a Redditor’s quip, “get all [our] health and political advice from MMA dudes that get their brains bashed in for a living”?

Some gurus aren’t even human; like the Tai Chi ads that my poor mother couldn’t discern were AI-generated instructors. I won’t bemoan the blind faith most folks have in the accuracy of chatbot answers. Or the flood of misinformation that existed long before their arrival. Both are already done to death. Plus, in a world that lives for profit, even licensed professionals distort the truth. Just Google the pharmaceutical scams in the last decade.

The allure of easy fixes is timeless.

It’s tempting to trust a new study that aligns with our confirmation bias, or follow a five-step routine that promises to quietly revolutionise our lives. Until you remember that wellness fads have been around since the dawn of time. Some still stick around. Bloodletting–commonly acknowledged as the cause of George

Washington’s death–prevails as alternative therapy in the cheetah print-inducing practice of cupping. The use of medicinal leeches, FDA-approved and all, continues in surgery into this century. Back to China’s new social media policy.

Brilliant as it is, it may not be entirely true.

Looking into the Cyberspace Administration of China, the authority that allegedly introduced the regulation, it’s hard to find confirmation. Reports mention that the country has subject-specific guidelines (since 2023, apparently), but monetary penalty when transgressed?

At the point of writing, I can’t quite ascertain how much of it is fake news, ironically. As contributor Tim Bajarin concludes in a Forbes article on the headline, “Now we wait to see if credentialing can coexist with creativity, and whether expertise can reclaim its place in the attention economy.”