Unscrupulous means to earn traffic, it is time to pose for short videos without a bottom line!

Recently, a short video of "A woman in Xi'an gave medicine to a colleague" spread quickly on the Internet, and the video content was "The woman did not take medicine because her colleague had a fever and was worried that her colleague would take leave. He was reluctant to take over his work, so he threw fever-reducing medicine into his water cup, and later won the understanding of his colleagues."

　　

The police investigation found that the short video was released after Zhao was posed, and he was given an administrative punishment in accordance with the law, and criticism and education were carried out.

　　

This kind of bottomless posing and shooting events have been common in recent times, such as "primary school students lose their winter vacation homework in Paris", "women are pregnant for 5 months to get married", "feed the hospitalized mother-in-law to eat instant noodles and abuse the mother-in-law" and so on. Many netizens sighed: The front foot was sad or happy because of the content of the video, and the back foot saw the police issue a clarification announcement, which reversed several times.

　　

The reporter of "Rule of Law Daily" learned that in order to attract the attention of users, the short video industry has formed a complete set of content production models. Some short video accounts will put a lot of thought into content creation, character creation, etc., and their content is usually planned and designed, and many videos will have shooting scripts, and there are many fictional or deductive plots in the scripts.

　　

Experts interviewed by reporters believe that although short videos are a form of entertainment and pastime, entertainment should have a bottom line, and it cannot be true and false, good and evil, and right and wrong are not clear. When short video creators produce or publish fictional content, they should prominently indicate the words "the work is an interpretation"; Relevant departments should further strictly rectify "Internet celebrity accounts" that pose for photos without a bottom line, and strictly manage the MCN institutions behind them (institutions that specialize in providing services to online video creators); While intensifying the crackdown on fake content, the platform also controls the content review and further optimizes the artificial intelligence recommendation mechanism to avoid "traffic first".

Manga: Takatake

Earn high returns for drainage

Self-directed and self-acting hot topics

In the short video of "A woman in Xi'an gave medicine to a colleague", the woman carefully stood at a desk, looked around and poured something into the water cup, with the caption saying that it was a fever reducer.

　　

As soon as the video was exposed, related topics quickly appeared on the hot search lists of major social platforms, and many netizens commented that it was "terrible" and "it is not easy to work as a worker, and it is necessary to guard against vicious colleagues". In the comments, someone also said matter-of-factly: "From other sources, the woman was drugged because she didn't want the pregnant woman to take maternity leave, otherwise things would be arranged for her, and she didn't want to do it." ”

　　

Things quickly turned around. The local police recently issued a document saying that after investigation, the video was inspired by a hot incident of "a woman putting an unknown object in a colleague's water cup" that occurred in other regions, and was made by conceiving a plot script and placing the camera frame at an appropriate angle. Zhao's behavior of rubbing hot spots and posing for photos has touched the bottom line of the law, seriously disrupting public order and causing adverse social impact. In accordance with the Public Security Administration Punishment Law, the police gave an administrative punishment to the offender Zhao in accordance with the law, and criticized and educated him.

　　

Since the beginning of this year, there have been many short video posing incidents.

　　

At the beginning of this year, a video of "a woman standing up to a 5-month pregnant belly to get married" attracted the attention of netizens. After a police investigation, it was actually self-media blogger Chen who bought fake pregnant belly props online in order to attract traffic and gain attention, disguised pregnant women to direct and act in blind date scenes, and made fake videos of pregnant women asking for marriage and posted them on online platforms, causing adverse social impacts. Chen confessed to his illegal acts, and the police have imposed an administrative penalty on Chen in accordance with the law.

　　

In February this year, the Internet celebrity "Thurman Cat Cup" posted a video related to "picking up first-year student Qin Lang's winter vacation homework in Paris, France" on multiple social platforms, which quickly aroused heated discussions on the whole network and occupied the hot search lists on multiple platforms for many days. In April, the Hangzhou police issued a notice, saying that this series of videos was jointly planned and fabricated by netizen Xu Moumou and his colleague Xue Moumou to attract fans and drain traffic, and then purchased winter vacation homework books online, took selfies and made them with mobile phones, and spread them to multiple online platforms, causing a bad impact. It is reported that the public security organs have imposed administrative penalties on Xu, Xue and their companies in accordance with the law. At present, WeChat, Weibo, Douyin and other platforms have banned the account of "Thurman Cat Cup".

　　

The reporter combed and found that this kind of posing incident, the content of which mostly involves social hot topics, can arouse widespread attention and heated discussions in a short period of time. Every time a posing video is verified and exposed, many netizens shout "cheated", "self-media is unscrupulous for traffic", "the cost of posing for fake is really low".

　　

Li Danlin, a professor of law at the School of Cultural Industry Management at Communication University of China, believes that such posed videos are often presented in the form of "real" social news, so they are more deceptive and immoral, and the producers and communicators use them to seek spiritual and financial benefits. If such immoral and deceptive information is allowed to spread unchecked, it will not only waste a lot of public resources, but will also have a negative impact on the social atmosphere and public morality, and may even infringe on the rights and interests of others and affect public order and public safety.

　　

Wang Lei, a researcher at the International Governance Base for Cyberspace at Beijing Institute of Technology, said that posing for a photo without a bottom line may violate a number of laws and regulations. In the field of online rule of law, the Cybersecurity Law clearly stipulates the legal obligations that network operators and network users shall abide by, including the prohibition of producing or disseminating false information.

　　

"The Public Security Administration Punishment Law provides clear penalties for acts that disrupt public order, such as online rumors. The Criminal Law also stipulates that posing for the dissemination of videos of fabricating false information may constitute the crimes of fabricating or intentionally disseminating false terrorist information, picking quarrels and provoking trouble, and fabricating or intentionally disseminating false information under the Criminal Law, depending on the mode of conduct. In addition, some bottomless posing behaviors may also be suspected of infringing on others' privacy rights, portrait rights, and reputation rights, and in addition to civil liability, serious cases may also be investigated for criminal liability for insult, defamation and other crimes. Wang Lei said.

Grasp the boundaries of reasonable posing

Fabricated plots need to be marked

Both parents died, and he had to drop out of school to take care of his younger siblings at home, and he fed on potatoes every day. Because of the constraints of life, I earn some extra income by shooting short videos...... The protagonist of this tragic life experience, "Liangshan Mengyang", has moved many netizens, and they have poured into his live broadcast room to "help farmers".

　　

However, the tragic characters, the dilapidated living environment, and even the pictures of picking "local products" are just a posing scam. The local police investigation found that Tang and others registered a company, hired Guo and others, and filmed short videos of their poor and tragic life experiences through speech and scripts, created fake characters, and packaged and incubated their Internet celebrity anchors such as "Liangshan Mengyang" and "Liangshan Aze". With the gimmick of "helping farmers", non-Liangshan agricultural and sideline products were purchased at low prices, labeled with "Daliangshan" commodity attributes, and live broadcast with counterfeit Daliangshan original ecological agricultural products, with sales of more than 30 million yuan and illegal profits of more than 10 million yuan.

　　

In March this year, the People's Court of Zhaojue County, Liangshan, Sichuan Province, pronounced a verdict in the first instance of the "Liangshan Mengyang" and "Liangshan Aze" cases, and the company's responsible persons, Tang, "Liangshan Mengyang" and "Liangshan Aze", were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 9 months to 1 year and 2 months and fines for the crime of false advertising.

　　

The reporter checked the public information and found that although bottomless posing incidents occur from time to time, often causing serious social impact, only a few cases have been sentenced for violating the criminal law. In practice, many of the reported cases of posing for photography and drainage were mostly punished with administrative punishment, criticism and education, and so forth.

　　

In this regard, Zhang Guodong, managing partner of Beijing Jincheng Tongda & Neal Law Firm, believes that it should be made clear that when punishing the behavior of posing for fashion, it is still necessary to adhere to the principle of moderation of the criminal law, and the criminal law cannot be regarded as the only legal means, and should also be considered for regulation from the perspective of civil infringement and administrative punishment. In practice, most of the posing behaviors are regulated through administrative law, among which Article 25 of the Public Security Administration Punishment Law is the most frequently applied, that is, for spreading rumors and deliberately disrupting public order, a detention of up to 5 days or a fine of up to 500 yuan shall be imposed; where the circumstances are more serious, they are to be detained for between 5 and 10 days, and may be concurrently fined up to 500 RMB.

　　

"The punishment in this article is relatively small, and it is difficult to achieve the purpose of punishment and education. Therefore, consideration can be given to appropriately increasing the intensity of punishment, especially the amount of property penalties can be appropriately increased, and the cost of violating the law can be increased. Zhang Guodong said.

　　

So, can short videos be posed? Where are the legal boundaries of drainage?

　　

Zhang Guodong mentioned that when discussing the boundaries of whether the pose is legitimate or not, the following points should be considered: whether the fictional plot is marked to protect the audience's right to know; whether it deliberately blurs the boundaries between "posed videos" and "real records", deliberately misleading the public and causing misunderstandings; Whether the content is socially undesirable. In particular, attention should be paid to whether the video contains inappropriate content clearly listed in industry regulations such as the "Detailed Rules for the Review of Online Short Video Content" and the "General Principles for the Content Review of Online Audiovisual Programs".

　　

"If the short video posed by the content publisher meets the above points, it obviously crosses the reasonable boundary of posing and impacts social order and good customs. If the adverse social impact caused is serious, it may also violate laws and regulations, and you need to bear the corresponding legal responsibility in accordance with the law. Zhang Guodong said.

　　

In Wang Lei's view, the boundary between the legitimacy of posing and posing must not adopt a "one-size-fits-all" approach, but should be balanced between encouraging innovation and creativity and standardizing and orderly operation.

　　

"The primary criterion for judging whether an online content publisher is justified or not is whether it conforms to public order and good customs, moral bottom line and public interest, and no content creation should exceed the above standards. Content creation for the purpose of making profits shall be subject to stricter regulations than general content creation, and if a business operator provides untrue product-related information in the course of commercial promotion, thereby deceiving or misleading the relevant public, it may be found to be a false commercial promotion as provided for in the Anti-Unfair Competition Law. Wang Lei said.

Increase regulatory penalties

Improve the traffic distribution mechanism

In response to the trend of posing for photos without a bottom line, the relevant departments are taking action.

　　

The Cyberspace Administration of China recently issued a notice to launch a two-month nationwide special action of "Clear and Clear, Rectify Self-Media without Bottom Line". The key problems of rectification include self-directed and self-staged fraud, unscrupulous means to stir up social hot spots, setting up topics with partial generalizations, creating personas in violation of public order and good customs, and indiscriminately distributing "new yellow news".

　　

Since December last year, the Ministry of Public Security has deployed public security organs across the country to carry out a unified special operation to crack down on and rectify online rumors. So far, the public security organs have investigated more than 80,000 clues on online rumors, investigated more than 10,000 cases of online rumors, arrested more than 1,500 criminal suspects, imposed administrative penalties on more than 10,700 people, and carried out more than 4,200 public rumors. In the typical cases of cracking down on and rectifying online rumors recently announced by the Ministry of Public Security, a number of posing incidents are prominently listed.

　　

The reporter noticed that while the relevant departments carried out a number of rectification actions, the major platforms also banned the relevant accounts as soon as possible.

　　

In this context, why are there still a large number of bottomless posers?

　　

Zhang Guodong analyzed that the reason for the repeated ban on posing fake videos lies in their high returns and low risks. In the traffic-oriented era of self-media, high traffic is often directly related to high returns. Posing without a bottom line can often quickly attract the attention of the public, bring short-term high click-through rates and attention, and then convert into advertising revenue, business cooperation and other benefits. Therefore, driven by profits, there are always people who take risks. In addition, although self-media platforms and relevant departments have strengthened supervision and punishment in recent years, there is still a lack of supervision in practice, especially in the huge Internet space, where supervision is difficult. Some posing fakes may go undetected or unpunished, leading some people to think they can escape punishment.

　　

In Li Danlin's view, legal and high-quality content requires corresponding investment and accumulation, as well as professional or even long-term learning and training, and some bloggers and video producers lack the due level of knowledge, cultural literacy and legal literacy, and want to gain attention, so they use bottomless posing and other means to concoct a large number of low-quality short videos.

　　

"From the audience's point of view, it is also because some netizens are not of high quality and lack of judgment. There is no bottom line for posing because the posing content will get a large audience, which is a condition that can constitute drainage. Li Danlin said.

　　

How can we eradicate the trendy behavior of posing without a bottom line?

　　

Wang Lei suggested that the platform should strengthen the whole-process management of self-media accounts, ensure the authenticity and accuracy of account information, and improve the information source labeling and display mechanism, so that users can clearly understand the source and authenticity of the content. In terms of traffic management, the platform should establish a reasonable traffic allocation mechanism, give a high recommendation weight to self-media with correct orientation and high-quality content, cut off the monetization benefit chain of traffic information without a bottom line, and resolutely prevent bad money from driving out good money.

　　

Zhang Guodong proposed that platforms should establish and improve the quality of account content and credit evaluation systems, establish account "blacklists" and hierarchical punishment mechanisms for MCN institutions, and take measures such as restricting account functions, stopping advertising publishing, closing and canceling accounts, and being included in the "blacklist" for accounts that publish fake and diversion videos in accordance with laws and agreements, and promptly report to the relevant competent departments. We-media operators should regulate online behavior within the legal framework and put an end to false "explosive models".

　　

"Improving the cultural literacy and media literacy of netizens, so that netizens have the ability to use the Internet well, is the basis for preventing this phenomenon. In addition, it is also important to theoretically explore the boundaries and meanings of the distinction between illegal crimes and undesirable misconduct, and to disseminate such knowledge and theories to Internet users. Li Danlin said.

Source: Rule of Law Daily