The invective never stopped. Some people sent a lengthy private message, accusing her of "beating the child at every turn and letting the child pick up clothes and wear", and cursing her with vicious words that "sooner or later she will be punished"; Someone left a message under her social account, "Stop making trouble, the devil who eats human blood steamed buns." ”......
At first, Chai Junyan only felt that these rumors fabricated out of thin air were "ridiculous", and once explained, clarified, and even replied, but on the mobile phone screen, more and more oncoming insults and slanders flooded her like a tide.
Insomnia all night, mental trance, depression, in March 2022, 34-year-old Chai Junyan was diagnosed with moderate depression. She finally understood the online violence that Liu Xuezhou had suffered, "It's not a disaster that can be avoided without looking." ”
On January 24, 2022, Chai Junyan forever lost Liu Xuezhou, who called her "aunt", an abandoned orphan, a 15-year-old boy who went through great efforts to find her biological parents, but committed suicide in the midst of online violence.
On the cusp, Chai Junyan learned to post Weibo, try live broadcasting, and collect evidence everywhere with the help of enthusiastic netizens. She is determined to fulfill Liu Xuezhou's last wish, "so that those who have lost their conscience on the Internet will get the punishment they deserve." ”
On February 13, 2023, the Beijing Internet Court held an online trial of Liu Xuezhou's death caused by online violence to verify the plaintiffs' qualifications of Liu Xuezhou's maternal grandparents, Sun Deming and Zhang Zhifang, and his aunt Chai Junyan also attended the hearing. "After waiting so long, I finally waited for this day." Chai Junyan said that the defendants in this prosecution are mainly the two self-media big V "truth brothers" and "warm-hearted sisters" who have abused Liu Xuezhou extremely seriously and caused a bad impact on the Internet. "Other active online abusers will continue to prosecute in the future, and they have not apologized so far." Chai Junyan sighed, "We know very well that no matter what the outcome of the case, we will not be able to get the child back alive. This lawsuit was not filed for financial compensation, nor did it have any claim for interest. I just hope that tragedies like the death of state and state by online violence will not happen again, and that online abusers will pay the legal price. ”
The Beijing Internet Court held an online trial of Liu Xuezhou's death by online violence
Deadly storm
At 4 a.m. on January 24, 2022, Liu Xuezhou died after ineffective rescue in Sanya, Hainan Province due to taking a large amount of antidepressant drugs.
Thousands of miles away in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, Chai Junyan, who was anxiously waiting for the flight to take off, looked at the suicide note left by Liu Xuezhou and burst into tears. She had thought she knew enough about this boy who regarded him as her own, but in the detailed and increasingly confused words, she found that "he still has so many things hidden in his heart." ”
In the suicide note, 15-year-old Liu Xuezhou recalled his tragic life in more than 7,000 words, "Born sold by his parents as a bride price, 4-year-old adoptive parents died, boarding school began in the second grade, school bullying victims, male teachers molested, and boys looking for relatives were abandoned for the second time..."
"Bullying", "obscenity" ... One by one terrible words stung Chai Junyan, "I never knew that Zhou Zhou had encountered so much in school. ”
In the family that adopted Liu Xuezhou, in addition to his grandmother, his aunt Chai Junyan was the closest person to Liu Xuezhou. "Grandma is the dearest and she used milk powder to feed Zhouzhou, but after all, she is old, and she only cares about feeding and warming Zhouzhou." Chai Junyan said that because her husband has been working outside for a long time, he has communicated with him the most since Liu Xuezhou became sensible.
Liu Xuezhou
Memories emerged, and Chai Junyan reproachfully remembered some red flags she had overlooked. One Friday, she and her husband returned to their hometown of Nangong from Shijiazhuang and went to school to pick up 9-year-old Liu Xuezhou home, only to see a bruise on his right face. Chai Junyan stretched out her hand suspiciously and asked him, "What's going on?" Liu Xuezhou dodged defiantly, only twisting his head and replying, "I fell off the bed and fell." ”
Also distressing to Chai Junyan was the online violence that she had unexpectedly besieged Liu Xuezhou.
Since late December 2021, when Liu Xuezhou successfully searched for relatives and met with her biological parents, Chai Junyan felt that "the child has a barrier from us (the breadwinner), and rarely shares his own affairs." ”
On January 19, 2022, at Liu Xuezhou's insistence, he moved out of his aunt's house. This two-bedroom apartment of more than 80 square meters once gave Liu Xuezhou a warm harbor. Since the sixth grade of elementary school, he has spent every winter and summer vacation here; In 2020, after enrolling in Shijiazhuang Law and Business Vocational School, it became a place where he went back every weekend. After recognizing his relatives, he became more and more eager to have his own space.
Chai Junyan's family and Liu Xuezhou
However, in the early morning of the next day, Liu Xuezhou posted a Weibo located in the hospital. Chai Junyan called and heard for the first time from Liu Xuezhou that he had suffered online violence, "He said that many people came to scold him indiscriminately, and he was angry with internal injuries." ”
One month after the successful search for relatives, Liu Xuezhou and his biological parents have gone from recognizing each other to turning against each other. The reason was that he wanted his biological parents to "give him a place to live" because he had no fixed place to live. But in an interview with the media, the biological father and mother said that Liu Xuezhou threatened them with a house. In the interpretation of more netizens, this search for relatives has become a plot with ulterior motives.
"Scheming", "disgusting", "dying"... Verbal abuse, slurs and personal attacks poured into the snowflakes; His clothes and every move became the focus of criticism in the public opinion field, and people magnified every detail and labeled him as "greedy", "selfish" and "full of lies".
Chai Junyan also tried to pull Liu Xuezhou out of the whirlpool of this network. She persuaded, "They are originally nonsense, you don't keep looking at those things on the Internet, don't care." ”
Recalling the conversation at that time, Chai Junyan choked up several times, "I don't know at all the lethality of online violence." At that time, she could not imagine that the words that filled Liu Xuezhou were enough to turn into a deadly storm.
The Internet, which had given the 15-year-old attention, encouragement and warmth, helped him realize his dream of finding his relatives in just a few days, but it also devoured him in a similar way.
Upended lives
Liu Xuezhou's suicide dealt a heavy blow to his breadwinner, who already suffered frequent misfortunes.
Chai Junyan said that during that time, the whole family washed their faces with tears all day long, especially her grandmother, who loved Zhouzhou, "couldn't keep her soul and cried until she fainted several times." ”
Bedroom, bathroom, phone case... In every corner of the home, Chai Junyan seems to be able to see Liu Xuezhou's shadow. She didn't dare to calm down, "As soon as her brain stops, it is the state and state appearance." ”
She most often thinks of 5-year-old Liu Xuezhou. In the first month of that year, just after the New Year, Chai Junyan returned home after giving birth in the hospital, and her grandmother told her, "The state collected 30 yuan to press the year, 10 yuan to buy a book and pen, and 20 yuan for you to buy eggs." Chai Junyan lay on the bed, tears running down her cheeks.
On January 31, 2022, on the night of the Chinese New Year's Eve of the reunion, Chai Junyan made up her mind to "seek justice for the state and state." In the suicide note, Liu Xuezhou expressed one of his last wishes: he hoped that those who participated in online violence would get the punishment they deserved. Chai Junyan watched it several times, and she felt that "this is the last thing I can do for the state in this life." ”
Liu Xuezhou raised his family and represented lawyer Zhou Zhaocheng
But the storm caused by this decision far exceeded the middle-aged woman's imagination. When she took the initiative to stand on the cusp of the storm as Liu Xuezhou's aunt, she also entered an Asura field full of criticism and noise.
Abuse, slander, sarcasm, questioning, all kinds of voices pervaded from the Internet to life. On the Internet, some people open live broadcasts and videos every day to refute this "woman with ulterior motives who came out after Liu Xuezhou's death"; Some people sent a series of private messages and messages, criticizing her for "abusing children and being the culprit who killed Liu Xuezhou." In the village, gossip continued, and even relatives and friends could not understand her approach, "People are gone, what is the use of defending rights now?" ”
Prosecuting the online abusers turned Chai Junyan's life upside down. She fell into the center of the vortex, busy clarifying and explaining, but the more she responded, the higher the wave rushed towards her; She gradually learned to be silent, but she still couldn't help but open her phone and catch a glimpse of those harsh words, "There is no way not to care."
Netizens' online violence against Chai Junyan
She was sleepless all night, in a trance, and when she went to work, the leader called her three or four times, and she couldn't hear her at all. In the past, she was the company's sales champion, but now, there is no performance for the whole month.
In March 2022, Chai Junyan walked into the hospital and was diagnosed with moderate depression; After leading repeated conversations, she lost her original job.
In front of this rural woman who went out to work before finishing junior high school, the head-to-head confrontation with online violence is a mountain that is more difficult to overcome.
Zhou Zhaocheng, the lawyer representing the case and a lawyer at Beijing First Law Firm, said that compared with other online violence cases, Liu Xuezhou was involved in a large number of infringements and illegal crimes involved in the online violence case. Whether it is screening out those suspected of infringement or illegal crimes, collecting evidence in accordance with statutory requirements, or classifying different responsible subjects to protect their rights, it requires a lot of meticulous work.
Tough forensics
The vast majority of netizens who participated in online violence wore the umbrella of trumpets and private accounts, and the vicious remarks full of screens quickly disappeared after Liu Xuezhou's suicide.
On the morning of January 24, 2022, 29-year-old Baiyang, a 29-year-old from Henan, could still see a large number of online violence remarks in the message area of Liu Xuezhou's Weibo, "They occupy the entire mobile phone screen, keep scrolling down, all like words, 'Why don't you die yet'". Indignant, the white sheep also watched them decrease, "By the afternoon, almost all of them were deleted." Many people even cancel their accounts. ”
That day, in Xinjiang, 30-year-old Rui Rui missed a day's work. Immersed in grief, she flipped through Liu Xuezhou's social account and kept taking screenshots to retain traces of online violence.
After Liu Xuezhou's death, Baiyang and Rui Rui each contacted Chai Junyan and spontaneously helped her collect evidence of Liu Xuezhou's online violence. There are also many people who extend a helping hand to Chai Junyan, they are from Tiannanhaibei, most of them are women, sisters, mothers, aunts, and even grandmothers, forming a huge volunteer group to defend Liu Xuezhou's rights.
Liu Xuezhou
Liu Xuezhou has done more than ten live broadcasts, but the images have not survived. Aries and volunteers collected hundreds of videos spontaneously recorded by netizens, "as long as twenty or thirty minutes, and as short as one or twenty seconds." It took another two weeks to deduplicate and piece them together in an attempt to restore the real experience of Liu Xuezhou during his live broadcast.
The rest of the time, they immersed themselves in the comment area of Liu Xuezhou's social account, looking for clues left by online abusers. Aries also meticulously compiled a list of key concerns, tracking nearly 20 users who frequently made online violent comments online.
But the more he digged in, the more Aries found that "it is too difficult to prosecute an online abuser."
The first obstacle is that it is difficult to know directly who "he" is. Aries tracked down a lot of invalid IDs, "most of them used small numbers, and they were logged off quickly." "In the online world, people identify each other by nicknames, and personal information such as names and ages in the real world are hidden, and it is difficult for Aries to find the real identity behind the ID.
Even if enough evidence of online violence is collected and tried to find the real "him" behind the online mask, new problems will emerge.
In criminal law, online violence is related to the crime of insult and defamation, which refers to the use of violence or other methods to openly insult or fabricate facts to slander others. where the circumstances are serious, they shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention, surveillance, or deprivation of political rights.
According to the judicial interpretation, the clearest criterion for determining the so-called "serious circumstances" is: in terms of the breadth of dissemination, the same information has been clicked or viewed more than 5,000 times, or forwarded more than 500 times.
However, the materials that private prosecutors can obtain are often only the content presented in the front of the social platform, and cannot obtain background data. "We don't see the number of views, and it's hard to tell how many times these comments have been retweeted." Aries said helplessly.
On the other hand, what constitutes an insult is also difficult to define. In addition to the obvious personal attack remarks, Aries collected more attacks on Liu Xuezhou's insinuations, "For example, some netizens commented strangely, 'What are you pretending?' How can a student go to Hainan to play without money? Some netizens gave him a dark nickname, and scolded people without naming names. Online violence has shifted from outright insults to obscure slander.
With the help of netizens all over the country, Aries sorted out hundreds of related videos, and Rui Rui collected thousands of relevant screenshots, but they couldn't be sure, "Are they valid evidence of online violence?" ”
Use online violence as a traffic password
Since becoming the lawyer representing Liu Xuezhou in the online rape case, which lasted for a month or two, Zhou Zhaocheng can receive evidence or clues provided by many netizens every day, "Some sent to our public mailbox, some sent private messages to our self-media account, and some directly found me." "Despite the large amount of repetitive information, the evidence provided by these enthusiastic netizens gives us an intuitive and comprehensive understanding of the harm Liu Xuezhou suffered in the last moments of his life." ”
According to preliminary screening, on Liu Xuezhou's Douyin and Weibo accounts, Zhou Zhaocheng has collected more than 2,000 remarks involving online violence, "These remarks are shocking, the words or pictures are very vicious, adults can not bear it, let alone teenagers." ”
In the comment area of Liu Xuezhou's social account, they found a large number of "copy-paste" online violent remarks - those large paragraphs of offensive remarks are exactly the same, even the punctuation marks, they constitute a brushing posture enough to bury the warm and encouraging supportive speech.
Zhou Zhaocheng and Chai Junyan
"Through the combing of these evidences, it is obvious that someone is maliciously leading the rhythm, and even forming a black industrial chain." For example, Zhou Zhaocheng said that some Internet celebrities used their influence to deliberately distort the facts, publish vicious remarks, quickly delete them after posting, and follow up through other associated accounts or trumpets, inciting more ordinary netizens to carry out intensive attacks on Liu Xuezhou during the same period; Some people deliberately cater to the polarized emotions of netizens, attract the attention of fans through false accusations, obtain huge traffic, and on this basis, carry out live streaming or commercial hype to obtain benefits, "using Internet violence as a traffic password." ”
In Zhou Zhaocheng's view, compared with ordinary netizens, these Internet celebrities who spread widely and deliberately incite online violence need to be held accountable. "At present, relevant lawsuits have been filed against these key perpetrators." Zhou Zhaocheng said, "However, this does not mean that the law does not blame the public, but it is necessary to adopt civil, criminal and other rights protection methods according to the degree of infringement of different responsible subjects." ”
At the same time, Zhou Zhaocheng believes that relevant platforms should shoulder responsibility for online violence, especially for minors encountering online violence.
Weibo screenshot
On January 28, 2022, the official @Weibo administrator of Sina Weibo Community Management issued a statement on the Liu Xuezhou incident, saying that since the party received the private message on January 12, as of 0:00 on the 24th, there were 1,239 users who had exchanged private messages with the party. Among them, some users had personal attacks, and the site permanently banned 40 illegal accounts identified, and banned 52 accounts for 180 days to 1 year. ”
Zhou Zhaocheng revealed that in the process of collecting evidence, the Douyin platform also gave some support and disclosed the infringement information of some online abusers.
"But we should not only focus on the 'pursuit' of online abusers, but also think about how to 'prevent' in advance." Zhou Zhaocheng said that platforms such as Douyin and Weibo, where the speed of information dissemination is increasing exponentially, should adopt technical means to block and intercept some vicious speech, provide emergency protection for parties, quickly cut off the channels of online violence transmission chain, and assist parties in complaining and collecting evidence. "There are often many online abusers, and it is difficult for ordinary people to prosecute all infringers, so platforms should actively intervene and play the role of judges to regulate the words and deeds of netizens." Otherwise, online violence will intensify. ”
Source: Qianjiang Evening News
Editor: Chen Yueyao