Xiami Music’s programmer discriminates users through database code

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A screenshot of Xiami Music’s app database code noting VIP from promotion event as "Beggar Vip" caused fierce responses among Chinese netizens on Sunday.

As one of the biggest music streaming service companies, Xiami Music, a division of the Alibaba Group, sometimes gives short-term VIP qualification to users as a hook to get people to continuously pay for the premium service. The free temporary VIP has the equal services as the ordinary VIP.

However, a user accidentally found the difference between these two kinds of VIP on the coding perspective. In the photo that the user captured, ordinary VIP is noted "isNormalVip", while the VIP for promotion named "isBeggarVip".

Xiami Music noted users that are experiencing VIP from promotion event as “Beggar Vip” in the database code. / Photo from TechWeb

Although it's standard to mark the meaning of one code in the note to make it understood easier, numerous netizens considered Xiami Music’s action as a discrimination and expressed their worries.

"It is Xiami Music but not us who want to offer VIP as gifts. It is them begging us to accept the VIP experience, but why are we considered as Beggar eventually?” said @Yangyong_Darling on WeChat, one of China's largest social media platforms.

"Respecting users is a professional quality, but not all programmers are qualified enough." said @ChengmoMorgan.

On the other hand, some netizens thought it was not a big deal and regarded it as a personal action and a self-entertainment.

One officer from the Xiami Music replied in the Alibaba’s internal website in the evening of November 19, they have already deleted inappropriate words and substituted all problematic files at the very first time.

The public letter from one anonymous netizen claimed as the programmer and apologized to users and Xiami for his misbehavior. / Photo from TechWeb

And later on Monday, an anonymous netizen wrote a letter claimed he was the programmer who did this, and said the incident was his personal behavior since he had left Xiami Music a month ago.

"I lost the sense of awe towards clients in my arrogant compliant. I originally did not mean to discriminate anyone but just showed his dissatisfaction towards complicated activity regulations." said the programmer in the public letter.

He apologized to both users and Xiami for his misbehavior, and promised to behave himself while coding in the future.