"If you have a question you don't understand, send me a private message, and it will be a violation to answer it here. "Late one night in early April, at two o'clock in the morning, in the live broadcast room of a live broadcast platform, a female anchor dressed sexy, asked the audience in the live broadcast room for gifts, and guided the "interested" audience in the live broadcast room to send her a private message to "learn more".
Late at night, all kinds of "out-of-line" behaviors began to appear in the live broadcast rooms of some platforms. Recently, the reporter observed a number of audio and video live broadcast platforms between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. for two consecutive weeks, and found that various "edge rubbing" behaviors appeared from time to time. Why does the chaos of late-night live broadcasts continue to be banned repeatedly? How do these anchors obtain the "traffic password"? This reporter conducted an investigation and interview.
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Some late-night live broadcast rooms have varying degrees of "miserable sales and edge rubbing" phenomena
At half past one o'clock in the morning on April 5th, in a live broadcast channel, a live broadcast room marked "Dance Anchor", in the background of dynamic music, 4 anchors showed themselves close to the camera, and asked for gifts from the "big brother" and "big sister" in the live broadcast room, and sometimes you can get the anchor's private WeChat by swiping a "rocket" (gift).
This is just a corner of the late-night live broadcast room, in some live broadcast rooms, every one or two o'clock in the morning, there will be some sexyly dressed female anchors, holding small microphones, during the live broadcast, seeing that some viewers ask questions, they say "inconvenient to answer", and then ask the audience to add a private social account on a certain platform to communicate. In the social media account interface provided by a female anchor, the content she posted has "rubbed the edges" and induced private chats.
Nowadays, with the continuous development of live broadcasting, these phenomena of "rubbing the edges" have extended to the field of late-night audio live broadcast and two-dimensional virtual anchors. Wang Wei (pseudonym), who works as an anchor on an audio live broadcast platform, said that she once swiped a more "side-by-side" live broadcast, from the anchor's avatar, nickname to voice, there are obvious sexual innuendos.
The reporter observed that in some late-night live broadcast rooms, some large-scale comments will appear from time to time in the public screen area (the real-time speaking area of onlookers), and some live broadcast platforms will also launch some interactive special effects, which can be used by onlookers for a certain amount of virtual currency.
It is worth noting that on a social platform, there are also some cases of minors posting "rubbing" videos late at night. In the video, the minors are dressed in "vests" and underpants and perform dance moves that mimic the popular short videos. Hashtags with a clear age point, such as "post-10s," were also added to the video.
In the late-night live broadcast room, there are still many "miserable" live broadcasts. The People's Court of Zhaojue County, Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province, recently pronounced a verdict in the first-instance trial of the "Liangshan Mengyang" and "Liangshan Aze" cases, and eight people were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 9 months to 1 year and 2 months for the crime of false advertising, and fines ranging from 20,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan. Previously, some live broadcast platforms have also imposed penalties such as closing live broadcast rooms and banning accounts for behaviors such as selling miserable goods. Despite this, behaviors such as false assistance to farmers and selling miserable goods are still staged in the live broadcast room from time to time.
Wang Chen (pseudonym), a graduate student at a university in Beijing, found that late at night, some live broadcast rooms used the elderly, the disabled and other groups to live broadcast goods, and some even used the banner of "helping farmers". He has watched some live broadcasts, and these elderly and disabled people sit the whole time, not talking or interacting, "like the background board of the live broadcast". Once, he left a message in the public screen area of the live broadcast room, questioning the "authenticity" of the live broadcast, and was kicked out of the live broadcast room by the administrator and blocked.
What does the late-night live broadcast room rely on to win the "traffic password"
During the live broadcast, Wang Wei found that generally after 12 o'clock at night, talent anchors such as singing would be broadcast one after another, and the number of "rubbing" anchors began to increase. "Maybe it's because I feel lonely late at night, and I want to find someone to relieve it, so as to stimulate and refresh myself. According to her observations, "rubbing the edges" will indeed bring good benefits.
"The traffic in the late night hours is good, and the competitive pressure is still small. Gu Yue (pseudonym), the person in charge of the operation of a live broadcast guild, said that generally speaking, most newcomer anchors will avoid the prime time of 8-10 o'clock in the evening and choose to broadcast live in the late night period. In addition, according to his observation, the spending power of the audience in the early morning is significantly greater than that during the day. "Many people stay up until the middle of the night and their brains are less awake, and it is easy to consume impulsively at this time. He said.
Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, said that the frequent chaos such as vulgar rubbing in the late-night live broadcast room reflects the loopholes in platform supervision, and the current artificial intelligence inspection system cannot completely replace manual review, and in the middle of the night, there may be a lack of human-assisted review. At the same time, in the middle of the night, the reporting function may not be as responsive as usual. In addition, most of the audiences who like to watch vulgar rubbing content are concentrated in the middle of the night, so the late-night live broadcast room has gradually become the "hardest hit area" for vulgar edge rubbing performances.
Li Chen (pseudonym), a live broadcast operator of a platform, introduced that most anchors will go off the air normally at about 12 o'clock in the evening, and there are relatively few anchors who grab late-night traffic.
"In view of chaos such as 'rubbing edges', it is difficult to directly define 'illegal' information in law. Jing Lijia, associate professor of Wuhan University Law School and deputy dean of the Institute of Network Governance, said that at present, in the "Provisions on the Governance of the Online Information Content Ecosystem" and other relevant regulations, in addition to the "legal" and "illegal" information stipulated, there is also a concept called "bad information". But for platforms, these will bring traffic, and they often lack the incentive to actively regulate and eliminate such phenomena."
Zhu Wei said that with the advent of the traffic economy, the development of e-commerce needs to use some special means to "drain", and "selling miserably, rubbing the edge" and so on is one of the cheap "drainage" methods. An important reason why these chaotic phenomena continue to persist is that there are loopholes in credit management. "Now if there is a problem with an account, unless it is a big Internet celebrity, it will 'seal its face', and other small Internet celebrities who rely on 'selling miserably and rubbing the edge' to get traffic, the platform will only block the online account in accordance with the regulations, and the people behind the account and the MCN company (referring to the organization focusing on the Internet celebrity economy and content marketing) will not be affected. ”
Gu Yue is responsible for the operation of the live broadcast guild on an audio live broadcast platform, and he introduced that once the anchor is judged to be in violation by the platform, he will face three levels of punishment according to the situation: C is a warning, B is a 10-minute ban on the account, and A is a permanent ban. During the ban period, streamers can still continue to stream by opening an account or opening an account on other platforms.
Online live streaming platforms need to innovate their business directions and don't always want to make quick money
"In the case of violations, we will decide whether to impose penalties based on the overall logic. Li Chen said that when the anchor is found to have violated the rules for the first time, the platform will give a reminder first, and if the violation continues, the anchor will be interrupted live broadcast, banned and other measures.
Li Chen said that the platform will formulate corresponding judgment standards according to relevant laws and regulations and previous cases, and front-line reviewers can basically determine whether there are explicit or hidden violations of relevant content in actual operation.
According to Zhu Wei's understanding, at present, the supervision of various platforms is different, and some large platforms have stricter supervision of bad content than small platforms, which leads to a "depression effect": some anchors who display bad content will gradually tilt towards small platforms, resulting in the phenomenon of "bad money driving out good money".
"At present, the basic legal framework on network information governance has been formed, and at the same time, the regulatory authorities should pay close attention to formulating unified standards for the management of bad information, and form a benign synergy between the platform and the regulatory authorities. Jing Lijia said that for the governance of bad information on the Internet, it is necessary to clarify the focus of the crackdown, formulate a long-term plan, conduct regular compliance inspections, improve the dynamic review mechanism, and further supervise whether the platform meets the requirements of content supervision.
Zhu Wei believes that it is necessary to incorporate the supervision of the live broadcast industry into the social co-governance system, and establish a reporting mechanism as a "starting point" for multi-party co-governance, "everyone can report problems at any time, and the platform will give feedback in a timely manner after receiving the report".
In fact, the punishment for violations of self-media accounts at the national level is increasing. In July 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued the Notice on Strengthening the Management of 'Self-Media' (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), which contains a total of 13 articles, which stipulate that website platforms should strictly implement "one number for one person, and two accounts for one enterprise" in terms of the number of accounts registered; At the same time, the "Notice" further strengthened the management of the MCN institutions to which the "self-media" belongs.
"These regulations can be described as 'fist-to-flesh'. Zhu Wei said that the "Notice" uses market means to carry out network governance, closely links the profit-making authority of "self-media" with compliance, increases the cost of violations of laws and regulations, and can effectively curb the breeding of violations to a certain extent, and deal with chaos such as late-night live broadcasts in a targeted manner.
Jing Lijia believes that in order to fundamentally solve the problem of chaos in live broadcasting, the platform needs to innovate its business direction. He observed that many mainstream live broadcast platforms have gradually transformed into business directions such as knowledge payment. "Don't always think about making quick money with vulgar and miserable content, there are many rich life scenes to dig into. ”
Source: China Youth Network