Some people say that microblogs have turned everyone into a reporter. With the instant publishing of personal thoughts and opinions, tens of thousands of micobloggers have highlighted cases of injustice for further investigation, or disclosed corruption and crimes.

However, on the microblog, you can never be sure if the information posted is true. I think that people should be cautious and if they are not sure if information posted online is true or not, they should not follow the masses blindly and forward everything they read online. Netizens should make their own judgments and should not believe everything they read.

Last Friday morning, an 87-year-old man lay in a downtown city street with blood all over his head. A microblogger soon posted pictures online, claiming that more than 20 bystanders surrounded the old man but no one dared to lift him up. These people took pictures and called the ambulance repeatedly. The ambulance center staff said there was no ambulance at that time and asked the bystanders to wait. Only a foreign female tried to help the man. She put a white towel under his head, was visibly upset, and accused the onlookers of indifference.

According to the information posted on the microblog, the ambulance didn't arrive until half an hour later. This message was forwarded thousands of times, including to many famous celebrities, whose criticism caused a tidal wave of condemnation of the Chinese bystanders.

However, the microblogger later admitted that he had wrongly described the scene. He also explained that he miscalculated the time. Also, he said that no one knew how to help the old man and everyone was afraid that inappropriate treatment may worsen the man's condition.

But the information had already spread online, with comments accusing Shanghai residents of indifference.

As more and more people tend to rely on microblogs as one of the fastest information resources, I think netizens, including celebrities, should be more cautious when forwarding unconfirmed messages.

Some people, especially commercial accounts that depend on the number of followers for their revenue, try to attract fans by exaggerating the truth, or prefer to forward unconfirmed cases of injustice. The more followers they have, the more advertising they can get. That is why they are often busy forwarding sensational cases.

Also last week, a man claimed his wife helped an elderly woman after she was knocked down by a vehicle and was wrongly held liable for the elderly woman's injuries. The man stood at the intersection of the accident scene for several days, holding a board asking for witnesses to come forward to prove his wife's innocence.

But later police found out his wife did knock the woman down on her moped, according to surveillance video cameras.

In both cases, later posts revealing the truth about these incidents were not forwarded as many times as the initial, sensationalist posts.

That is why we should be alert and cautious when reading or forwarding posts we read online.