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Should Influencers prove they are experts in their fields before posting about it?

Iain

I read an interesting article about how China is banning Influencers from posting about subjects that they are not qualified in so they can control misinformation better.

https://greekreporter.com/2025/10/28/china-influencers-diplomas/

Regulators in China have moved to ban influencers without college diplomas, directing social media platforms to verify that they hold professional credentials before commenting on sensitive topics such as finance, medicine, law, or education.

I can imagine that was implemented here and extended to cover politics then it would cut a huge amount of misinformation and bias.

What are your thoughts? Good idea or bad?

  • in reply to Expecto_Patronum

    It's difficult enough on here to share things that have worked for us, I can' timagine what it would be like if the rules were stricter, we wouldn't be able to talk about anything.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    Yes I absolutely agree. I nearly went down that route with my response but decided just to reply about what I actually thought. Things like influencers and social media are always going to be difficult. Yes they could do with stricter rules and managing but how do you do that without taking away freedom of speech. There are definitely problems with things on the internet but I wouldn't want to live under the kind of regime that China has.

  • in reply to Expecto_Patronum

    I suspect this is more about the Chinese government wanting there to be only one source of information, them.

    Maybe efforts would be better spent trying to educate people in critical thinking and not believing everything someone says to them, but this is China and critical thinking isn't allowed, you might turn it on the government!

  • It isn't new that those that know least espouse their opinions the most - the expression "empty vessels make the most noise" comes to mind.  However it only really becomes a problem when they are being paid to advertise scams or use pseudoscience to sell products (which should be caught by current laws).

    I should mention I've never watched an influencer so would have no interest in anything they would say.

  • I'm not sure how I feel on this one because in some ways I do - there is a lot of misinformation on the internet and influencers so not always help this, some intentionally some not. Certainly there are topics that people should not be giving advice on etc if they are not qualified to.

    But what about those that are raising awareness of their own experiences - what it is like to be blind, or in a wheelchair or neurodivergent. They wouldn't be officially qualified but can probably give a better insight than a lot of qualified people.