Douban: Difference between revisions

{{shortShort description|Chinese social networking service website}}

| name = Douban<br/>豆瓣

| logo = Douban_logo.svg

| url = {{URL|https://www.douban.com/}}

| commercial = Yes

| type = [[Web 2.0]], [[Social network service]], [[Online]] [[music]], [[Film|movie]] and [[book]] [[database]]

| language = [[Chinese language|Chinese]]

| registration = Optional

| launch_date = {{start date and age|2005|3|6}}

| current_status = Active

Douban (Beijing Douwang Technology Co. Ltd.)<ref>{{Cite web|title=豆瓣|url=https://www.douban.com/|access-date=2021-04-19|website=www.douban.com}}</ref> was founded by Yang Bo (杨勃). He had majored in physics at [[Tsinghua University]] before he attended [[University of California at San Diego|University of California, San Diego]] as a PhD student. After receiving his PhD in [[computational physics]], he worked as a research scientist at [[IBM]]. Later, he returned to China, becoming the CTO of a software company founded by one of his friends.

In 2005, Yang started to create a web 2.0 sitewebsite for travelling named Lüzong (驴宗), initially a one-person project at a Starbucks in Beijing. In a couple of months, however, the site was transformed into what is now known as Douban.com.<ref>{{citecitation webneeded|url=http://www.crunchbase.com/company/douban|titledate=doubanSeptember profile|publisher=[[crunchbase]]|access-date=2011-12-112021}}</ref>

*The Year 2005

In March 2009, Douban removed art paintings of the [[Renaissance]] on the grounds that they contained 'pornographic' elements.<ref name="BBC">{{cite news |date=2009-03-17 |title=泥马战河蟹 草根斗权威 |language=Chinese |work=[[BBC]] |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/simp/hi/newsid_7940000/newsid_7948300/7948369.stm|title=泥马战河蟹 草根斗权威|publisher=BBC中文网|date=2009-03-17|access-date=2009-03-20}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/chinese/simp/hi/newsid_7870000/newsid_7877400/7877462.stm|title=给大卫像穿衣抗议政府封网|publisher=BBC中文网|date=2009-02-09|access-date=2009-02-09}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |urldate=http://news.163.com/09/0210/08/51PEPTVI00011229.html2009-02-10 |title=网友响应反低俗号召 给名画"穿上"衣服 |work=[[NetEase]] |publisher=信息时报[[Information Times]] |dateurl=2009http://news.163.com/09/0210/08/51PEPTVI00011229.html |url-02-10status=dead |access-date=2019-01-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090213135303/http://news.163.com/09/0210/08/51PEPTVI00011229.html |archive-date=2009-02-13|url-status=dead}}</ref> This led to a campaign called "Portraits: Dress up" in which internet users were asked to dress up images of famous renaissance nudes in a protest against Douban's self-censorship. The administrators then removed the discussion about the campaign.<ref name="BBC" />

That year also saw the 20th anniversary of the [[1989 Tiananmen Square protests]], and Douban further extended its keyword list to ban any terms that are likely to relate to the incident.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Custer|first1=C.|title=What to Expect on June 4, China’sChina's Unofficial and Orwellian ‘Internet'Internet Maintenance Day’Day'|url=https://www.techinasia.com/june-4-china-unofficial-orwellian-internet-maintenance-day|work=Tech in Asia|date=3 June 2013|access-date=30 January 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Honorof |first1=Marshall |date=4 June 2013 |title=China marks Tiananmen Massacre with 'Internet Maintenance Day' |work=[[NBC News]] |url=http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52096871/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/china-marks-tiananmen-massacre-internet-maintenance-day/|work=NBC News|date=4 June 2013}}</ref> One example is the ban on mentioning [[Victoria Park, Hong Kong|Victoria Park]] in [[Hong Kong]], the venue where the memorial gathering for the 20th anniversary was held, in the fear that it may lead to sensitive discussions. Users also found that some discussion groups, like the Hong Kong cultural study group ''hkren （一兜）[https://www.douban.com/people/Dullmau/]'', were suddenly banned and all topics were removed without any notice. This angered some members, causing them to move to other similar websites that employ less strict self-censorship policies.<ref name="BBC" />

In 2011, some Chinese [[lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender]] (LGBT) groups announced that they had planned to boycott Douban, as their posts announcing an LGBT-themed film festival had been censored by the website. In mainland China, films and television programs with LGBT themes are subject to state censorship.<ref name="timelgbt">{{cite newsmagazine|last1=Jiang|first1=Jessie|title=Beijing's Gay Community Fights Censorship|url=http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2080443,00.html|workmagazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|date=1 July 2011}}</ref>

Douban has been accused that many users of Douban purposely gave ''[[The Wandering Earth]]'', a 2019 Chinese science-fiction film, one star. Critics further accused that some users "change their given five stars to one star" and some users are paid to give one star to the film, which later turned out to be false. On 12 February 2019, Douban officially announced that "Massmass score-changing is abnormal and it won't be counted in the total score. To avoid such incidentincidents, we are urgently optimizing product features." in its official [[Sina Corp|Sina]] [[Sina Weibo|Weibo]] account.<ref name="ThePaper1">{{cite web |last=Chen |first=Yuxi |date=2019-02-12 |script-title=zh:《流浪地球》遭大量改分？豆瓣：前500热评仅4人跨星修改 |url=https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_2974939|work=The Paper|language=zh|access-date=2019-02-12 |work=[[The Paper (newspaper)|The Paper]] |language=zh}}</ref>