Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Alter, Author 丨 Li Xiaochan, Editor 丨 Shen Jie
Entering the time node of "3.15", some industry chaos has once again been focused by public opinion.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) recently issued the "Regulations on the Administration of Internet Pop-up Window Information Push Services (Draft for Comments)", which points directly to the near-rampant pop-up chaos, emphasizing that users must not interfere with or affect users to close pop-up windows in any form, and at the same time clarify that the push of pop-up information must be manually reviewed.
For most netizens in China, the pop-up window is almost an inescapable "fate". "Psoriasis" message boxes on web pages, open-screen advertisements that some apps can't close, push messages that fill the lock screen... It always inadvertently interferes with the user's attention, and even mixes with pornography, gambling, violence and other illegal content.
When the Cyberspace Administration of China once again imposes a tight hoop on the "pop-up push", can it cure the chronic disease of malicious harassment of users by pop-up windows and restore a pure land to the Internet?
01, barbaric growth of the bomb "bomb"
Pop-up technology did not appear to be evil, but a commercial innovation.
At the end of the 1990s, advertising had become the most mainstream way to make money on the Internet. However, at that time, the technology was still limited to embedding ads into the content of the page, which increased the exposure of the advertisement to some extent, but also caused concerns on the brand side: if the user reads negative content, it will inevitably associate the advertisement with negative information, which may cause immeasurable adverse effects on the brand.
To reassure the brand, a programmer named Ivan Zockman came up with a new idea and wrote down a piece of code for the "ejection window." When users browse web information, they can use the form of "pop-up window" to push advertisements, which cleverly avoids the association between advertisements and page content.
What even Ivan Zockerman did not expect was that the invention that was originally intended to solve the problem out of goodwill finally opened a "pop-up age" that was criticized by hundreds of millions of netizens.
Although technology is innocent, but can not withstand the abuse driven by commercial interests, in the Internet industry growth rate of the most ferocious era, "pop-up advertising" gradually towards a road of no return: some people use pop-up windows to spread vulgar content, some people use pop-up mechanisms to collect user data, and some people lure users to download malware through pop-up windows... It has had an irreversible impact on user experience and network security.
According to the data disclosed by CNNIC in the 47th "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network": among the software commonly used by mainland netizens, there are as many as 1221 network pop-up behaviors, and as many as 82.4% of the respondents have expressed their disgust with network pop-up windows; nearly 80% of consumers have encountered network pop-up problems, such as "pseudo-closure", "difficulty in closing" and hegemonic screens, etc., of which 49% of consumers have encountered false closing buttons and other problems.
Even in the era of mobile Internet, the potential threat of "pop-up windows" has not decayed. Many APP on the open screen interface racking their brains to induce users to click, some browsers will pop-up window as a tool to attract the attention of users, and even many companies will set their sights on the elderly group who have just touched the net, accidentally touch the pop-up window will automatically download software, every few seconds will pop up a pop-up window advertisement. If young people still have the energy and pop-up advertising "fighting wits and courage", the elderly group has become a hotbed for the barbaric growth of pop-up advertising.
As the inventor of pop-up advertising, Ivan Zockman has publicly confessed more than once, claiming that it was his worst invention. It's just that Ivan Zockerman's apology is not binding, because pop-up advertising accounts for 80% of the total advertising revenue of some companies, even if more and more users criticize pop-up advertising, but under the direct drive of interests, the industrial chain of pop-up advertising is still spreading.
02, the "net" window is unfavorable to the crux of the problem
The governance around pop-up advertising has never been absent, and has even become a normal state of the Internet.
As early as 2014, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce carried out joint punishment activities, requiring relevant enterprises to rectify and control the uncivilized phenomenon of online pop-ups, and seriously investigate and deal with illegal pop-ups such as spreading obscene pornographic information, Trojan viruses, and fraudulent information.
By the beginning of December 2019, the People's Daily publicly published an article criticizing pop-up advertising, bluntly saying that "pop-up advertising" is wanton, which not only affects the mood and work efficiency of Internet users, but also brings problems such as Trojan implantation and information fraud.
In the second half of 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially launched a six-month special rectification action, which focused on rectifying problems such as application software startup pop-up window deception to mislead users and forced provision of personalized services, including the whole screen of the pop-up window for jump links, providing false close buttons during targeted pushes and other scenarios.
A phenomenon that seems a bit strange is: why the regulatory authorities have repeatedly rectified pop-up advertising and achieved certain results, but why will the pop-up chaos "recur" after the rectification? It's not hard to find some potential answers from both sets of data.
Qi Xiangdong, chairman of Qianxin, has publicly revealed: "The business specializing in the production of pop-up windows has developed into a complete black industrial chain, its advertising company is customized on demand, and it only takes a few cents to place an average of only a few cents, and finally the advertising company and the distributor are divided according to the exposure rate and click rate, compared with the current cost of obtaining customers from a few yuan to thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan, the investment of a few cents in the network pop-up window can be said to be negligible, and it is a profitable business for black advertising companies and distributors." ”
At present, the punishment of pop-up window advertising in China mainly relies on Article 63 of the Advertising Law, that is, the use of the Internet to publish advertisements without conspicuously indicating the closure sign, to ensure that the one-click closure is ensured, the market supervision and management department will order corrections, and the advertiser shall be fined between 5,000 yuan and 30,000 yuan.
If you make a comparison before and after, compared with the benefits that pop-up window advertising can bring, the illegal cost under "severe punishment and strict governance" can be said to be a small witch, driven by "high profits and low pay", most enterprise platforms will choose to take risks, and the so-called user experience will be shelved. This is also the main crux of the inability of many "clean" window actions to eradicate the chaos in the industry, and if you want to eradicate the lesions, you still have to take strong medicine.
The "new regulations" issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China have recognized the various drawbacks in the market, requiring that ordinary users and members must not be maliciously pushed at different frequencies, and must not interfere with users closing pop-up windows; personalized pop-up services must not be abused, using algorithms to block information, excessive recommendation, etc.; to ensure that pop-up ads are closed with one click... Even if it is impossible to say what changes the new regulations will bring, it is a positive signal that the industry is improving.
03, to control chaos also need to use heavy codes
Standardizing the push behavior of pop-up windows may only be a small step taken by "heavy code and chaos".
In the last round of special rectification actions against the Internet industry, experts suggested that article 44 of the Advertising Law should be amended as soon as possible, clarifying the relationship between the rights and obligations of the majority of online users and online advertising publishers and operators, changing the logical relationship between advertising release and user closure, allowing the majority of users to choose whether to click the open button to browse advertisements, while increasing the amount of fines, and increasing penalties in terms of credit punishment and market access.
The CAC's choice to solicit opinions at the 3.15 node to try to eradicate the chaos of pop-up push is self-evident, not to mention that there was no shortage of similar measures in the past.
For example, the "General Design Specification for Ageing of Internet Websites" and the "General Design Specification for Adaptability for Aging of Mobile Internet Applications (APP)" issued in April 2021 clearly state that advertising pop-ups are strictly prohibited in the aging version of the interface and the separate age-appropriate version of the APP, require relevant websites and APP reference documents to be adapted to aging and barrier-free transformation, and establish an evaluation system composed of three parts: user satisfaction evaluation, technical evaluation and self-evaluation.
Baidu, Ali, Tencent and other Internet giants in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology "shot", has begun their own core products of the ageing transformation process, the results are also very instructive, concise interface favored by young people, so that many users on social networks said that a variety of applications have switched to the elderly version.
What needs to be treated differently is that the aging transformation of the Internet is of a public welfare nature to some extent, and the Internet companies that have been placed in the spotlight have to respond to the call, but the norms for "pop-up advertising" have touched the core interests of enterprises, and there is still uncertainty in the solicitation of opinions on "regulations", the introduction of landing, and the response to the transformation.
After all, the last round of rectification actions, it involved the problem of "false close button", some head APP has really been appropriately improved, but there has also been a situation of changing the method to play "wiping the edge ball", such as implanting a shake, twist and twist and other sensitive and fast operations in the opening screen interface, slightly moving the mobile phone automatically jumps to the third-party application, some users even joked: before did not dare to mess around, now do not dare to move.
The problems reflected in it have been quite obvious, whether it is the "Advertising Law" or the temporary rectification action, the existing laws and regulations are still too scattered, the content of the rules and regulations is not detailed enough, resulting in the law enforcement process is difficult to accurately define, some enterprises always have loopholes to drill, the content is vulgar, can not be closed, forced to bundle and other pop-up chaos can not be eradicated for a long time, even if it has reached the point of "everyone shouting and beating".
Fortunately, in the game with pop-up advertising for more than ten years, more and more loopholes are being plugged, more and more legal provisions have been introduced, and the long-cherished wish of popping up windows to no longer be random may no longer be far away.
04, write at the end
As an ordinary netizen, let us worry about more than "pop-up window", big data killing, information cocoon, platform two choices and a series of phenomena, have exposed the Internet enterprises' disregard for user rights, in this era of often hanging on the user experience, it seems that no one really cares about what the user wants to experience.
It is also the Internet companies that need to be reflected on, and the decline of the Internet advertising industry is an indisputable fact, even if it is a first-line Internet giant, micro-growth and even negative growth industry is a common phenomenon. In such a situation, what is the value of "users"? The tools to monetize traffic, or the core assets on which your business depends? Different answers will correspond to different endings.
There is reason to believe that "pop-up advertising" will not be the last chaos to be governed, and sooner or later the boots of supervision will land in more and more scenes.