The "Blood Slave" case is reversed, but why is 58 easy to be scolded?

The Cambodian "blood slave" case, which was raging last month, has reversed. The official account of the Chinese Embassy in Cambodia issued a document saying that the Cambodian police conducted a preliminary investigation and determined that the case was purely fabricated. Because the parties claimed to be deceived because of the recruitment information seen in 58.com, as soon as the embassy article came out, Yao Jinbo, the boss of 58, forwarded the article in the circle of friends, saying that he was very wronged.

Logically, whether the Cambodian "blood slave" case is true, whether the parties have been deceived because of the information on 58, and whether 58 has a large amount of false information, are three independent things. If the "Blood Slave" case is ultimately proved to be false, then of course 58 was scolded for this matter, of course, unjustly; but was 58 scolded only for this one thing? If it is because there is indeed a lot of false information on 58, then 58 is unjust.

Further, 58 completely avoids being scolded, which I think is also unrealistic. Because classified information advertising is inherently a scolding business. Let's talk about it today.

Moral flaws

In real life, places such as telephone poles and toilet door panels are often posted with various small advertisements, many of which are false or even illegal information. From the early years of "old Chinese medicine and old military doctors" and "face-to-face removal and never recurrence" to later "rich women and heavy money for children", these are all such things.

So will people who are deceived by these small advertisements scold the telephone poles and toilet door panels? Usually not. Even the most stupid person understands that telephone poles and toilet door panels are innocent.

Continue to deduce this scene. WeChat is also a high incidence of fraud information and fraud transactions, will anyone think that WeChat has cheated their money? Usually not, but will someone scold WeChat? Yes. Although WeChat is free to use, it has gained users and traffic, so that it can benefit from advertising, payment and other businesses, not completely unrelated.

In addition, unlike telephone poles and toilet door panels, WeChat is an Internet product with risk control capabilities, not a borderless land. Of course, being deceived on WeChat will leave digital evidence, which is easier to remedy than pure offline scenes.

Further, to 58 such classified information sites. Unlike Craigslist, the originator of classified information websites based on advertising revenue, membership services, value-added services and vertical businesses account for more than half of the 58%s revenue sources.

On 58, users can post and search for information for free, but the priority of information display can be intervened by paying. This is similar to Baidu's bidding advertising, whether 58 or Baidu, as an information display platform, you can manipulate the display and make a profit through manipulation, which is not reproachable in business, but there are moral flaws. 58 was scolded, and Baidu was scolded for a similar reason.

Review costs

Some people may say that it doesn't matter to collect money, isn't it enough to increase the intensity of auditing?

Auditing, or in other words, regulation, comes at a cost. Cost consists of two levels, one is the economic cost and the other is the capacity cost. The former represents how much money it will take to do it, and the latter represents what ability to do it.

Boss Yao's circle of friends also mentioned that 58 after this incident, the technology worked overtime to improve the platform rules. This is an example of economic cost. Nowadays, labor costs are getting higher and higher, and Internet platforms mainly rely on machine audits to improve efficiency and reduce costs. But neither machines nor humans can do it without error, and scammers will always come up with all kinds of tricks to fight against the rules of the platform, not to mention to divert traffic outside the platform to cheat.

Classified information is a low-profit business born in the PC Internet era, if you blindly expand investment in hardware, technology, and labor, it will make this fading business become less sexy.

In fact, in addition to enterprises, the administrative examination and approval of government departments now increasingly adopt "formal review" instead of "substantive review", that is, only review the correctness and completeness of materials, rather than authenticity, and the submitting party of the materials bears the civil and commercial affairs and even criminal liability caused by the submission of false materials. The reason is that the economic cost of substantive examination is too high and the efficiency is too low.

As for the cost of capacity, it is better understood. 58 As an enterprise, in addition to reviewing whether the information material itself is compliant, and whether the license of the individual or enterprise submitting the information is complete, it does not have the ability or authority to conduct a more in-depth review. Moreover, as a platform, it does not intervene in the whole process of business delivery, and the platform covers a variety of services, and the difficulty of supervision is higher than that of many more vertical and heavier platforms.

But once ordinary people are deceived, turn their heads to look, the platform knows to collect money, and even collects money from scammers to help promote, and will definitely scold the platform.

Improper endorsement

Worse still, 58 consciously or unconsciously plays a role in "adding credit" and "endorsing" information publishers.

Open the latest version of the 58 Same City App, the launch screen advertises "massive real jobs", "high-quality real estate", "buy cars and sell cars on the regular platform", "maintenance and moving cleaning clear code price, rapid door-to-door".

As a well-known platform that allows individual users and small and medium-sized enterprises to publish information, these commitments of 58 are actually adding credit and endorsement for information publishers. However, credit enhancement and endorsement also require costs including auditing, and problems are to be carried.

I am opposed to the platform enterprise's excessive endorsement and even guarantee of the credit of the transaction party, which means that the platform needs to provide audit and guarantee costs that are positively related to the scale of the transaction, if the cost cannot be balanced through business profits, then this business model is not established.

However, in reality, a platform that does not promise to provide credit enhancement and transaction security is difficult to gain the trust of ordinary users, resulting in the inability to expand the scale of business. Ordinary people open a classified information platform, and every step of the operation has a risk prompt, telling you to beware of being deceived, and this platform probably no one dares to use.

However, the platform provides credit enhancement and guarantee, and once the accounting is not clear, the business model collapses. Similar examples include P2P in previous years, as a matching platform, should not have promised to the lender's funds, but in order to attract users, without exception promised to provide a bottom, and finally before the arrival of supervision, many platforms hung up because of too much default and could not cover the bottom.

Therefore, since the platform is patting its chest to guarantee the endorsement, it is not surprising that it was pointed at the nose and scolded.

Users do evil

Finally, let's talk about the user's perspective.

In 2018, both houses of congress and house of Congress voted to pass the Anti-Cybertransaction Act (FOSTA). FOSTA requires websites to assume legal responsibility for hosting other content related to sex trading companies in order to prevent transactions in a linear manner. After that, Craigslist closed the personal ads category that had been open for more than 20 years.

Although the current c2c comprehensive classification information platform has been gradually replaced by various vertical products and b2c products in various tracks, after all, there are still a large number of low-frequency, long-tail, c2c or small b2c information matching needs waiting to be met.

The participants in such scenes are uneven, the moral cost is not high, and both supply and demand are at risk of being deceived. The platform does not dare to scare users, saying that we have scammers haunting, you have to be careful yourself, and you are responsible for problems.

Although we can't overestimate the moral level of large enterprises, as individuals and small and micro enterprises with relatively low credit costs, they also need to take responsibility for the chaos of platforms such as 58. While condemning the platform, do not forget to publish information that is specific to some organizations and individuals. How to evaluate and manage their credit and increase the cost of "doing evil" is also very important work. What is needed here is the follow-up of platform rules and laws and regulations.

At least for now, users do evil and insults also need to be borne by the platform.

summary

In short, adults should be responsible for their own judgment and behavior, at their own risk, which sounds heartwarming. However, many people's information screening ability is indeed limited, and even if they are cheated of a little money, once there is a problem involving major property losses and healthy life, we cannot accept the logic of "he is stupid so he should be deceived", so online loans and medical advertisements will be scolded so fiercely, so the Wei Zexi incident has become a turning point in Baidu's reputation and stock price.

Therefore, the business model of classified information advertising, accidents are inevitable, and scolding is inevitable. What everyone expects is that the platform will increase its censorship within the scope of cost; outside the platform, various industries and government departments will increase self-discipline and supervision to reduce the occurrence of major vicious incidents, protect the weak and ordinary people, and reduce their potential harm.

58 Have there been any efforts to improve? I believe they are constantly improving. Have you done the work and been scolded, have you been wronged? Don't be wronged, because of his business model, he earns money that is easy to be scolded.