Mobile apps are killing the beloved online military bulletin board

A Chinese military forum favored by the country’s nationalists will close in the coming months, two decades after it was founded. The move provides insight into the decline of online message boards, or BBSs, and the growing scrutiny of online platforms.

Known as tiexue.net, which translates to “Iron Blood” in English, the forum disabled its post-and-reply feature on December 20, saying it would cease operations on March 1, 2022, as it was “unable to keep up with the times,” according to an announcement last week. In a separate statement, the website’s operator, Beijing Tiexue Technology, added that the shutdown was prompted by “the transformation of business strategy”.

Since going online in 2001, Tiexue has attracted over 10 million users who are largely patriotic military enthusiasts. Known as junmior military fans, they are known for their provocative comments and commentary on topics ranging from China-US relations, military equipment, and even entertainment that touches on nationalist issues.

Many Tiexue users have lamented that their beloved forum goes offline, with some reminiscing about the old days. However, they weren’t entirely surprised by the closure.

“The disappearance of online forums and communities is linked to the way people now access the internet via mobile phones and the emergence of different social media applications like WeChat,” a former user of Facebook told Sixth Tone. Tiexue nicknamed Xia.

According to Beijing Tiexue Technology, the platform racked up losses for three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020. Although the website has sought to transform itself over the years, even moving into e-commerce as early as 2007 by making and selling military-style clothing, it didn’t take off as hoped.

Tiexue joins several other notable BBS platforms that have fallen due to changing digital landscape and consumer habits. MOP.com, established in 1997 and one of China’s best-known online entertainment forums, also banned users from posting content in April as the platform had become nearly obsolete.

“The official release of Weibo in 2012 brought an end to the BBS era. It allowed information to spread much faster and in a way completely unmatched by BBS, making it pale in comparison,” Leilei wrote afterwards. , the pseudonym of a former chief operating officer of MOP.com, referring to the explosive growth of the microblogging platform: “Communities will never die out, but a new form of product will always replace an old one in the era of ‘Internet.”

Publisher: Bibek Bhandari.

(Header image: A view of the Tiexue.net booth at a fair in Beijing, 2012. Wu Changqing/People Visual)