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Internet celebrity "Mao Cup" came forward to apologize, but in addition to the pressure of public opinion, the blogger and the MCN behind it are facing administrative penalties or will be removed from the platform.
In February this year, the blogger "Mao Cup", which has 40 million fans on the whole network, posted a video of "picking up the homework book of primary school student Qin Lang in Paris", saying that she picked up two winter vacation homework books on the streets of Paris, France, and posted a video hoping to "return the winter vacation homework to its original owner". After the video sparked a heated discussion and was forwarded, "Uncle Qin Lang" appeared, saying that "Qin Lang" was a student of "Class 8 of Xichang Primary School". As the popularity gets higher and higher, netizens found that whether it is "A Cat Cup" or the video released by "Uncle Qin Lang", they are all fiction and fabrications made out of nothing.
On April 12, the Xihu District Branch of the Hangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau issued an announcement, pointing out that the whole incident was a video script written, directed and acted by Mao Cup and his colleagues, and it had a bad impact.
On April 13th, Weibo, WeChat, Douyin, and bilibili announced the closure of the account of "Mao Cup"; yesterday, Mao Cup's stores on Douyin and Taobao showed that they were about to terminate their operations, and all products could no longer be displayed; Zhiji Automobile and FPA responded that there is no cooperative relationship with Mao Cup at present.
At this point, the farce ended, and "Cat Cup" found no such person on the Internet. The fall of "Cat Cup" has knocked on the heads of all MCNs and Internet celebrities who believe in the supremacy of traffic.
This is a signal that the Cyberspace Administration of China and relevant government agencies are becoming more and more strict about the governance of the network environment, and it is also a warning that the operation of the MCN industry is outside the "traffic law", and social conventions and business conventions always exist.
MCN farce endlessly,
A trapped online content ecosystem
After the "Cat Cup" incident fermented, some netizens said, "Isn't it a fraud to deceive the public's attention and even trust by fictitious events, obtain traffic and achieve the ultimate goal of making profits?"
Indeed, perhaps at the beginning of the birth of self-media, it was commonplace for the whole network to rack their brains and shake their burdens and create harmless jokes, but as the Internet content ecology became more and more mature, the creators of "Cat Cup" and the MCN institutions behind them could easily leverage millions of traffic, and after that, they could reap great economic benefits, which was no longer a harmless thing.
According to CCTV News, Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, commented, "Relevant laws also have specific provisions on this, requiring platforms to strengthen the management of MCNs." For example, for the publication of false information on MCNs, or the use of matrix methods to spread false information, etc., once there is a violation of laws and regulations, the platform must remove the MCN, and carry out certain restrictions on this and other related measures. ”
This shows that MCN is directly responsible for the content of self-media accounts. Internet celebrities are direct exporters, and MCNs play multiple roles in planning, operation, and promotion behind the scenes, and it is also difficult to escape the blame for the bad impact of inferior content.
In July last year, in order to rectify the chaos in the industry and strengthen the management of self-media, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of 'Self-Media'", which contains 13 requirements such as strictly preventing counterfeiting and counterfeiting, strengthening the display of qualification certification, standardizing the labeling of information sources, and strengthening the management of information authenticity, including one "Increasing the management of MCN institutions belonging to 'self-media'".
In the first half of this year, some Internet celebrities and MCNs who are still trying to exchange traffic and gain revenue through content that deviates from the sword, we found that both government agencies and Internet platforms will be punished, and the room for error is getting smaller and smaller.
In January, an MCN organization used artificial intelligence tools to generate false news in batches, disseminated it on the Internet, attracted fans and made profits, and was ordered to suspend business for rectification;
If the first two items are MCN institutions at the beginning of planning content, there is a mentality of deception and fabrication, and it is inevitable to punish relevant bloggers and MCN agencies in order to protect the real self-media content environment. At the beginning of this year, the Wuxi Municipal Market Supervision Bureau fined an MCN agency 2,000 yuan for "its Internet celebrity production of food exploration short videos without indicating the word 'advertisement'", and in March, the MCN agency under Papi sauce published an advertisement for IPL hair removal products without review and was fined 36,000 yuan, which is enough to show that the content supervision and advertising content review of MCN institutions are becoming more and more strict and concrete.
Regulation is getting narrower and narrower,
Will MCN institutions move towards a "healthy state"?
It is not surprising that MCN institutions are becoming more and more strictly regulated.
This is especially true when short video platforms, audio platforms, social platforms, and even shopping platforms are increasingly relying on content. MCN agencies build bridges between content and users, and promote cooperation between Internet celebrities and brands. However, on the one hand, it is based on whether it can produce high-quality content, and on the other hand, it is based on whether it can attract more traffic, and the two ends of "creating good content" and "pursuing commercial interests" are often out of balance.
When problems such as content quality problems, copyright issues, data fraud, and conflicts between MCNs and Internet celebrities break out repeatedly, over time, it is the interests of consumers and brands that are harmed. Taking a step back, even if there is no obvious problem at the content level, due to the unified management of MCN, it may also lead to the problem of content homogeneity, which will also affect the user's browsing experience to a certain extent. Therefore, when Internet content has become more and more a standardized industry, it is naturally urgent to standardize the supervision of MCN institutions.
In addition to government departments, at this stage, major Internet platforms have also issued MCN management specifications.
For example, at the beginning of MCN's entry into the platform, Douyin set an entry threshold from the number of talents, the number of fans and other indicators, so as to ensure that the MCN institutions settled on the platform have a certain scale and level; The Xiaohongshu platform will also impose penalties such as bans on non-compliant institutions, and at the same time, there are corresponding requirements for the number of bloggers for MCN institutions at different levels of S, A, and B.
In the final analysis, MCN is not a traditional industry, and with the changes in the Internet content ecology, the profit model, business structure, and subdivision track of MCN institutions are constantly changing. Therefore, the supervision of MCN institutions is also "narrower and narrower" in the process of exploration.
So, in the future, what kind of MCN institutions are needed by the Internet industry and the public?
Compliance with relevant regulations and strengthening self-regulation is a basic prerequisite. In addition to the self-inspection of self-media content, MCN institutions, as the main content producers in the Internet ecosystem, have relatively higher commercial content content, and they also need to have a responsible attitude towards the public. The advertising content and advertising process of the MCN must be reasonable and legal.
Looking further, under the premise of compliance, independently incubating talents, producing content, and cooperating with merchants, so as to create a mature content business model, rather than relying only on its "signboard" celebrities to extract value, makes MCN institutions have the possibility of long-term and healthy development.
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