标题： 用户位置泄露无法阻止海外批评，但加剧了中国社交媒体上的地区分歧 显示英文标题

标题： User Location Disclosure Fails to Deter Overseas Criticism but Amplifies Regional Divisions on Chinese Social Media

摘要： 我们使用一个高频的未受审查的用户参与数据集，包括165个知名政府和媒体账户上的数万条评论，研究了新浪微博实施的用户位置披露政策的行为影响，新浪微博是中国最大的微博平台。 利用平台在2022年4月28日突然推出的基于IP的位置标签，我们比较了政策变化前后评论区的用户行为。 尽管该政策公开被解释为遏制虚假信息和对抗外国影响的措施，但我们发现海外用户的参与度没有下降。 相反，它显著减少了国内用户对其家乡省份以外本地议题的参与，尤其是在批评性评论中更为明显。 证据表明，这种影响并非由普遍的恐惧或对可信度的担忧驱动，而是由地区歧视性回复的增加所导致，这增加了跨省参与的社会成本。 我们的研究结果表明，身份披露工具可能会通过激活现有的社会分裂产生意想不到的后果，从而在不直接审查的情况下加强国家控制。 显示英文摘要

摘要： We examine the behavioral effects of a user location disclosure policy implemented by Sina Weibo, China's largest microblogging platform, using a high-frequency dataset of uncensored user engagement, including tens of thousands of comments, on 165 prominent government and media accounts. Exploiting the platform's abrupt rollout of IP-based location tags on April 28, 2022, we compare user behavior in comment sections before and after the policy change. Although the policy was publicly justified as a measure to curb misinformation and counter foreign influence, we find no decline in participation by overseas users. Instead, it significantly reduced domestic engagement with local issues outside users' home provinces, particularly among critical comments. Evidence suggests this effect was not driven by generalized fear or concerns about credibility, but by a rise in regionally discriminatory replies that increased the social cost of cross-provincial engagement. Our findings indicate that identity disclosure tools can produce unintended consequences by activating existing social divisions in ways that reinforce state control without direct censorship.