Gionee M3 Helped Find Streams Of Misinformation Generated By Major Media Around The World

Popular wisdom says: the media turns first into SMD, and then into weapons of mass destruction. The last stage, of course, hardly threatens sites of non-political topics, but I just became convinced that there is a practice of mass disinformation and generation of ducks all over the world. And the reason for this practice is not someone’s malicious intent, but banal unprofessionalism and general inability to fact-check, combined with the desire journalists issue the news as quickly as possible. Alas, in the pursuit of a reader (and, as a consequence, advertising revenue), news editors of even reputable and authoritative publications (unlike their expert and analytical departments) do not bother either checking sources or analyzing facts.

There is one very large and respected technology site in the Russian Internet. This site is known throughout Runet for its expert publications and reviews, it is considered one of the most authoritative sources, but several years ago it underwent a redesign, and at the same time a revision of the approach to the work of the news editorial staff. At the forum, the administration cheerfully reported on the growth of search indexing and attendance, and readers responded with heavy criticism of the news headings: flashy yellow headlines “a la Akket”, a stream of petty news about rumors, and most importantly – multiple errors and typos in the texts. Alas, the situation has not improved over time, but the administration is satisfied with everything, because the main audience advertising the site is now not geeks and IT-specialists (glory to Seteviy, the expert section of the site was not damaged!), but shirnarmass who get there from news aggregators.

So, on the second of January I go to this site and see the news that an inexpensive smartphone Gionee Ti13 is presented in China …

Helio P60, triple camera, 6.53 “HD + screen, 5000 mAh battery – in a word, an ordinary Chinese state employee. Stop, but I definitely saw it somewhere! Well, this is last year’s Gionee M3, aka Xiaolajiao 40.

Briefly about what happened to Gionee and what does Xiaolajiao have to do with it

Gionee was a large and internationally renowned smartphone manufacturer. She not only produced them under her own brand, but also worked as an ODM manufacturer, and many of her developments were distinguished by technological novelty. For example, the Gionee Elife S5.1 – the world’s thinnest smartphone for 2014 and one of those to this day – was sold in Russia as the Fly Tornado Slim.

Gionee, being a successful company, went bankrupt 3 years ago under amazing circumstances – its accounts were lost in a casino. But after a series of legal measures, it seemed to be revived and, having lost its own production capacities (taken away in favor of creditors?), Now produces in China smartphones ordered under ODM contracts from Xiaolajiao (the name means “Little Hot Pepper”, it is on the logo). Moreover, in India she sold the rights to the name of the local Jaina Group, known for Karbonn smartphones (this brand was liquidated in 2019 due to the loss of demand). A in nigeria the rights to the brand were bought by a certain local firm and there all of its smartphones are ordered from Tinno. Thus, the Nigerian, Indian and Chinese assortments of Gionee do not overlap now.

Maybe Gionee decided to re-release the old device with some minor modifications under a new name? But it is not on the official website! It’s good that under the news is indicated a source – Gizmochina (this is, if anyone does not know, one of the largest and most respected English-language news resources about Chinese electronics). I go there – and the factory index of the smartphone is indicated there: G7620DE. An internet search confirmed that it was the M3. Ok, and where did they get the firewood from? Source listed again – dubious looking site Playfuldroid… And they, in turn, indicated as a source the page product in a Chinese online store. And there this smartphone is also called Ti13, but reviews about it are dated last fall. Strange … Everything looks as if someone confused M and Ti1 (and in fact they are similar). Well, at least one blunder in the entire chain of retold news has already been found: the smartphone has not just been released.

However, why would someone create news about an unimportant device that is simply sold in China (and nowhere else) and nothing interesting happens to it? Maybe the original source of the news isn’t Playfuldroid at all? I’m going to look! I go to Google News and see that many world publications have written about the “novelty”. One of the Brazilian sites even indicated the exact release date – “Friday, December 31” (despite the fact that one of the Chinese sites issued a similar news on December 27). I’m looking for the original Chinese name – 金 立 M3 and 金 立 Ti13. Nothing particularly interesting was found, except Japanese note, the author of which cautiously draws attention to the fact that the characteristics and design of the novelty exactly coincide with the M3. And I also found this picture:

After some inspection of Chinese sites and taking into account such a picture, I came to the conclusion: apparently, the program for recognizing the text in the image worked crookedly for someone (or maybe he himself is a Uyghur or Mongol, who does not know English language) and the name M3 turned in Ti13, under which the device got to the marketplace. Then someone decided to post not news, but just a note that such a smartphone is on sale, and get something from it (well, there are all sorts of affiliate programs of online stores, referrals, bonuses for driving a friend). Then someone, seeing it and mistaking it for news, reposted it, adding gag that the smartphone had just been presented. And then foreigners swooped in on this news, who began to translate it en masse for their own needs, without even trying to verify the facts. It got to the point that a non-existent smartphone got into African catalogs!

Thus, the news about the Gionee Ti13 revealed a whole bunch of mistakes: a wrong name, an erroneous release date, and even an erroneous reasoning about a “forgotten trademark” and “still a living brand”, which in recent years has been much more alive than many. And the result of this is a newspaper duck (or, as they say now, fake) about a non-existent smartphone. News editors of the media around the world, in pursuit of the reader, generate content without regaining consciousness, but the result is it… Isn’t it time to stop? ..