Representative Committee Member Debates Online Live Broadcast Supervision: Chaos Stems from Tips?

(Visual China/Photo)

From 2018 National People's Congress deputy Kong Tao proposed to strengthen the supervision of network "black anchors", to 2020 National People's Congress deputy Ding Xiaobing proposed to strengthen the supervision of "live streaming with goods", and then to 2021, the State Internet Information Office and other seven departments jointly issued guidance opinions, saying that it is necessary to establish and improve the classification and grading management of online live broadcast accounts, and set a cooling off period and a delayed arrival period for rewards when necessary.

At the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2022, a number of people's congress deputies and CPPCC members once again put forward suggestions or proposals related to short videos and online live broadcasts, and some of them also appeared on the Weibo hot search list, causing controversy. Southern Weekend reporters interviewed 3 of them, and sorted out their suggestions and proposals, trying to explore how to reasonably supervise online live broadcasting and related industries while encouraging some content creators and anchors.

What is the cause of the live broadcast chaos

There is no bottom line for rubbing traffic, no bottom line for live broadcasting, online begging, data fraud, vulgar content... When it comes to online live broadcasting, in the view of Li Jun, a deputy to the National People's Congress and secretary of the party branch of Xiuyun Village, Baiyi Town, Cangxi County, Guangyuan City, Sichuan Province, he has won a large number of network anchors with strong gold absorption ability, but the function of the platform such as tipping has also brought a lot of social chaos.

Xiao Shengfang, a deputy to the National People's Congress and president of the Guangdong Lawyers Association, also paid attention to the problems caused by the "tipping" mechanism of online live broadcasting: the male cashier after the 90s embezzled 48.26 million yuan of public funds, and rewarded the anchor for more than 20 million yuan in more than a year; the deceased husband rewarded the anchor with more than 2.5 million yuan, and the wife sued the anchor and the platform for return after discovery; the poor student disguised himself as a rich second generation in the circle of friends, borrowed more than 100,000 yuan to reward the anchor, but his parents at home ate low insurance.

However, why is webcasting so chaotic? Li Jun believes that at present, the income of network anchors is high and the cost of breaking the law is low, and real-time live broadcasting is difficult to supervise. If illegal live broadcasts are not regulated, bad money will drive out good money, resulting in compliant and legal live broadcasts being at a disadvantage in competition. In addition, it is also easy to make young people think of unearned gains. In response to the phenomenon of pornography and vulgarity, the platform is "there are policies on the top and countermeasures on the bottom", always designing rules with the goal of maximizing benefits, and even giving it traffic.

Xiao Shengfang believes that "the 'tipping' behavior comes from money too quickly and too much, making many young people flock to the live broadcast industry, and to a certain extent, there is a bad atmosphere dominated by gimmicks and curiosity in the entire industry." "Even adults are vulnerable to undesirable content on online shows, and minors are even more affected by their immature minds."

At the same time, although the "juvenile model" that has been pinned high hopes at this stage has achieved certain results, there are still many defects. "Minors are prone to take advantage of various loopholes in live broadcasting platforms, bypass the constraints of the minor model, and watch a large number of online shows that are only suitable for adults," Xiao Shengfang said. Some live broadcasting platforms allow this to happen out of economic interests, and even assist minors in evading supervision by regulatory authorities.

Live Tipping: Cancellation or Grading?

The two NPC deputies, who are aware of the similarity, have different proposals in 2022.

Li Jun suggested that the live broadcast tipping function of the online platform be completely abolished. Although he also pointed out that it can be responded to by introducing official review standards, strengthening supervision, improving the reporting system, and guiding positive energy live broadcasting, one way that can effectively eliminate all kinds of vulgar live broadcasting is to completely cancel the platform tipping function.

"Because the main source of income from online live broadcasting is the virtual gift of the audience tipping, it is not profitable to get up early, and closing the tipping function of the platform can effectively eliminate the vulgarity, vulgarity and other eyeball-rubbing behaviors carried out by the anchor in order to obtain gray income, and can effectively purify the network live broadcast environment." Li Jun said.

If it is difficult to completely close the tipping function, he suggested that the relevant regulatory authorities can "retreat to the second place" and "strictly control the proportion of platforms such as live rewards and virtual gifts, and the maximum percentage of the platform is not more than 10%." At present, according to his understanding, tipping income has become the most important source of income for many platforms. A short video platform has a year of live broadcast tip revenue of tens of billions, and the platform commission is as high as 50%, which can be said to be a huge profit.

Li Jun admitted that live broadcast rewards have played a positive role in increasing the income of young people and supporting new industries, and some excellent live broadcast content such as knowledge popularization and the promotion of the culture of the times are still worth supporting. After the cancellation of the tipping, the loss of revenue from the excellent content live broadcast can be compensated by setting up a paid method to enter the live broadcast room. "I think if it's really going to be learning (through live streaming), there are other ways (paid), not necessarily through the form of tipping." Li Jun said.

Compared with Li Jun's suggestion, when chatting with his peer friends about today's live broadcast chaos, Xiao Shengfang thought more about how to guide everyone to carry out tipping activities more rationally. At the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2022, Xiao Shengfang suggested that "a cooling-off period for tipping be set up compulsorily.". Xiao Shengfang divided the online show live broadcast into three types, and suggested adopting different management models: a type of live broadcast that strongly supports professional knowledge and professional skills; absolutely prohibits three types of live broadcasts that violate laws and regulations and violate the principles of social order and good customs; and for the vast majority of the second type of live broadcasts that have no professional content but do not violate the law, such as pure face value live broadcasts, online entertainment live broadcasts, etc., "mandatory setting of a cooling off period for tips", and the right to set the upper limit on the amount and frequency of their tips will be transferred to the regulatory authorities by the network platform.

For the "mandatory setting of the cooling-off period for tipping", Xiao Shengfang suggested that after tipping such live broadcasts, tippers can withdraw tips within three days without reason, which can not only directly reduce the blind tipping under the impulse of tippers, but also reversely promote live streamers to deepen content creation and reduce the generation of vulgar and boring live broadcast products.

"Considering the legitimate rights and interests of live broadcasters, and in order to prevent tippers from abusing the mandatory cooling-off period system, it is necessary to make certain constraints on the mandatory cooling-off period system." For example, if a tipper withdraws a tip to the same live streamer three times within a certain period of time during the cooling-off period, it can be regarded as malicious intent and the tip from the fourth time will not be withdrawn. Xiao Shengfang said.

In February 2022, the State Information Office issued the Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Standardized Management of Online Live Broadcasting, article 10 of which stipulates that "(for online live broadcasting) when necessary, a cooling-off period and a delayed arrival period for tipping" is set. Xiao Shengfang believes that this is only a flexible clause, not a mandatory clause, and according to the current situation of online live broadcasting, it is necessary to amend it to a mandatory cooling-off period system.

At present, the governance model of online live broadcasting is coupled between the general self-inspection of the platform and the handling of individual cases by administrative organs. However, from the perspective of effect, it is difficult to truly form a broad and long-term deterrent to the live broadcasting industry by imposing top-level penalties on some platforms; the profit-seeking nature of live broadcasting platforms also leads to the lack of motivation to take the initiative to conduct self-inspection and self-purification in the absence of rigid constraints on the system. Xiao Shengfang believes that the formation of a joint force for the governance of online live broadcast chaos will be a long-term project, which requires a benign organic combination of regulatory authorities and live broadcast platforms.

Zhang Yiwu, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and a professor at the Department of Chinese at Peking University, also has different views on the proposal to completely cancel online live broadcast rewards. "It's like watching a play, when the troupe gives you a show, you have to buy a ticket. For example, if you enter a bookstore, you want to buy an introduction to law, you can't say that you take the book and leave, right? "Taking the dissemination of knowledge popularization and the promotion of traditional culture as an example, he believes that whether it is live broadcasting or short video creation, excellent content dissemination itself is a work that has paid considerable labor and painstaking efforts, and should be reasonably paid, and tipping is one of the reasonable remuneration paths." (After reading it) you think this is very good, valuable, and enlightening to you, and then you will pay", in Zhang Yiwu's view, this is actually a reasonable payment for a "goods-to-plate version".

However, such as tips for children and teenagers, tips for low-level fun, and even behaviors that induce consumers to over-tip consumption, Zhang Yiwu believes that they all need to be restricted and strengthened.

"So it can't be said that the tip is to be absolutely critical." To be paid reasonably, this is reasonable in any society. Zhang Yiwu said.

The third voice: live broadcast to promote the dissemination of knowledge

Unlike Li Jun and Xiao Shengfang, Zhang Yiwu has been more aware of the rise of knowledge popularization and promotion of traditional culture as two content categories when observing short videos and online live broadcasting formats in recent years.

As of December 2021, Douyin knowledge videos have been played more than 6.6 trillion times, liked more than 146.2 billion, commented on more than 10 billion, and shared more than 8.3 billion. From January to October 2021, Tsinghua University opened 384 live public classes on the platform and Peking University opened 509. If you take the traditional culture of quyi as an example, as of November 2021, the average number of quyi anchors on the Douyin platform alone has reached 3719 per day, and the revenue has increased by 232% year-on-year.

However, under the prosperity, there are also shortcomings. Zhang Yiwu believes that the proportion of excellent and professional creators in the overall user is still limited, and the new media popularization and dissemination of knowledge and cultural content has not yet been chained and systematized, and the disseminators are often "independent" and lack linkage. In addition, the enthusiasm of outstanding talents to carry out new media knowledge and cultural dissemination is not yet widespread, and an online talent matrix still needs to be formed in each discipline.

To this end, he wrote the proposal to "use new media to promote the popularization of knowledge and the dissemination of traditional culture" in his 2022 proposal.

Zhang Yiwu suggested that experts and scholars in various fields should be encouraged to carry out science popularization on the platform through short videos, live broadcasts, etc., so as to increase the absolute number of high-quality knowledge disseminators on the Internet. He perceives that in major universities and research institutes, there are in fact a large number of experts who are born with a "good sense of the Internet" and are also very influential. "In various colleges and universities, there are very good lecturers, and I think there are many now. I think it's easy for them to get into the field of knowledge dissemination. He said.

For example, Zhang Yiwu said that an expert can record the most interesting "one point" in his own content and make a two- or three-minute video release. After that, he can also do the same, do another point, and gradually connect them to form a systematic teaching.

In addition, Zhang Yiwu believes that such as "Natural Science Week", "Humanities Week" and "Traditional Culture Month" can also be set up at the national level, on the one hand, to strengthen the linkage of experts in a certain professional field, on the other hand, to invite famous teachers from famous schools to open live classes, and to transmit them to the areas where high-quality teachers are missing through the network.

For those enterprises, institutions and individuals who carry out knowledge popularization and traditional culture dissemination through short video live broadcast platforms, Zhang Yiwu suggested that they should not only be allowed to obtain income through live broadcast payment, network tipping and other models, but also encourage and support at the policy level.

A feasible way is to organize industry associations or non-governmental organizations under the guidance of the government to reward and motivate outstanding communicators and units. At the same time, the government can also set up funds, "the platform can be rewarded for doing a good job", and activities such as "Traditional Culture Communication Week" can also apply for fund support, so that communicators have better room to play.

Putting aside the live broadcast and short video of knowledge science and traditional culture, such as live broadcasts and videos of games, fashion, outdoors, singing and dancing, do we need similar incentive policies? Zhang Yiwu believes that the above types also need self-discipline and supervision, but their total amount of traffic and revenue is already very large, and may no longer need the incentives of relevant policies.

Southern Weekend reporter Jiang Bowen Southern Weekend intern Cao Jing