What can be done to curb the bottomless "traffic impulse"?
On April 21, the "Network China" WeChat official account issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Special Action of "Clearing and Rectifying 'Self-Media' Unlimited Bountiful Traffic'", requiring that a two-month campaign be carried out nationwide from now on. The special action of "Qinglang·Rectification of 'self-media's' bottomless gambling of traffic'" curbs the trend of "self-media" fake photos, compresses the space for behavior of "self-media" without bottom line and enhances the credibility of information released by "self-media".
In the short video era where “traffic is king”, fictional plots and staged stories have become routine means for some Internet celebrity bloggers to harvest traffic. Various life-like scenes and seemingly real and touching narrations also make it increasingly difficult for netizens in front of the screen to distinguish between true and false.
Recently, a video of "renting a house in Shanghai for 50 yuan a month" has aroused the attention and discussion of the living environment in big cities among netizens. But after verification, it was found that there was also traffic playing tricks on it. A 25-year-old young man came to Shanghai from other places to look for a job on April 12. Through an online intermediary, he found a farmhouse in a village in Zhangjiang Town, Pudong New Area, and rented a room at the corner of the staircase of the farmhouse for 50 yuan per month. Storage Room. Although he was told from the beginning that the storage room could only store luggage and items, not accommodation. However, he still checked in without permission and successively posted 25 videos and live broadcasts on Douyin and Bilibili platforms, attracting attention and receiving "gifts". Soon, some decoration companies smelled the "traffic code" from "a young man living in a storage room" and launched short videos of "renovating a mini coffin room in Shanghai" to cater to netizens' feelings or imagination about the difficulty of urban life.
Such traffic routines are not unfamiliar. The "Qin Lang lost his homework" incident that caused a lot of controversy even lasted for nearly two months on various platforms in the form of a "series". From fabricating a video of "primary school students losing their homework books in Paris" to successfully mobilizing the whole society to find the owner of the homework books, this farce ended with the video poster's Douyin account being permanently banned and his company being administratively fined. But on the same day, Zhang appeared in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, posing as a food delivery rider. He published a false short video with "low salary and platform deduction" and was criminally detained by the police. Although this "renter" in Pudong later regretted his deliberate posing for traffic, driven by traffic thinking, basic bottom lines such as integrity have long been forgotten.
It can be seen that when traffic becomes the biggest pursuit, accounts will participate in hot spots and create hot farces in an attempt to gain a foothold on the short video platform. When the traffic password fails after repeated attempts, it will be difficult to change it after repeated attempts to fake it to gain attention. In this regard, there must be stricter rules to restrain all types of account entities, and account entities that seriously violate regulations and breach of trust must be punished and made to pay the price they deserve.
Of course, the website platform is also to blame. In July 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Management of "We-Media"", which clarified that website platforms require "self-media" to be responsible for the authenticity of the information they publish and reprint, and to add labels of fictional content or controversial information. After that, platforms such as Douyin required creators to clearly mark their videos with text such as "fictional/deductive works, for entertainment only." If there is no such mark, it will cause misunderstandings among the public and the news media, and it will become "false information." You will be punished by being banned from the platform and having your account blocked.
However, since regulatory penalties are mainly borne by self-media accounts and the platforms where they operate do not bear joint and several liability, the management effectiveness is not ideal. At the same time, in terms of traffic diversion effect, when self-media accounts fake photos to gain traffic, the platform also indirectly enjoys the dividends of the traffic explosion. Taking the profit of the guy who rented a house as mentioned above, out of the 600 yuan reward he received, the Douyin platform took a commission of 300 yuan, and he received 300 yuan. Therefore, as the profiteer of staged video traffic, if the platform does not assume corresponding responsibilities, it will be difficult to change the platform’s attitude of “turning a blind eye” to staged videos. And this is not the important reason why short video content is mixed. reason?
Therefore, in order to curb the traffic impulse of short videos from the source, on the one hand, we must strengthen the management of various accounts, and on the other hand, we must bring various short video platforms into supervision. Once false short videos infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of others and create negative social consequences, Impact, the platform should also bear the responsibility for inadequate audit management. As required by the special action of "Cleaning up the "self-media" bottomless traffic", only by tightening the main responsibilities of information content management on website platforms and cutting off the interest chain of "harmful traffic" to attract fans and realize, can high-quality information content be more accessible. reach the scope and create a clear cyberspace.
