Case Review

Yang and Zhang couple like to browse short videos on various platforms in their daily lives. The two found that the number of likes, shares, and complaints about a video directly affects its exposure and the popularity of the topic. So the two of them discovered the "way to make money" by registering a large number of accounts, accepting commissions for a fee, and manipulating videos, articles, products, etc. on the internet. By forwarding, commenting, and liking in large quantities, adding positive and negative heat to related content, or cracking down on designated targets through centralized complaints and reports, such as deleting, blocking, and restricting traffic, manipulating public opinion in this way. Based on this, we have undertaken many commissions for film and television works, online games, live streaming, internet celebrities, merchants, and more, and have obtained high income. The two believed that simply liking, brushing traffic, and making a report or complaint to the platform without making any inappropriate remarks would not result in any legal responsibility, but little did they know that such actions had already violated the law.

Lawyer analysis

With the rapid development of the Internet, a large number of network armies have emerged on Internet platforms. These online water armies charge fees, accept instructions from clients, pretend to be ordinary users, publish or manipulate designated content, and have a significant impact on the online environment.

The Cybersecurity Law stipulates that any individual or organization using the internet shall comply with the Constitution and laws, abide by public order, respect social morality, shall not endanger cybersecurity, and shall not use the internet to fabricate or disseminate false information to disrupt economic and social order.

According to the Regulations on the Governance of Network Information Content Ecology, it is prohibited to infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of others or seek illegal benefits through the publication, deletion, or other means of interfering with the presentation of information. It is not allowed to carry out traffic fraud, traffic hijacking, false registration of accounts, illegal trading accounts, manipulation of user accounts and other behaviors through manual or technical means, in order to disrupt the order of the network ecosystem.

The Regulations on the Management of Internet Posting Review Service also stipulates the specification of "post review". Follow up comments are users who publish text, symbols, facial expressions, pictures, audio and video information on Internet websites, applications and other website platforms with public opinion attributes or social mobilization capabilities by means of comments, replies, messages, bullet screens, likes, etc. Neither the aforementioned Internet platforms nor users shall infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of others or public interests, seek illegal interests, maliciously interfere with the order of post comments and mislead public opinion by publishing, deleting, recommending post comment information, using software, employing commercial institutions and personnel to disseminate information and other means to interfere with the presentation of post comment information.

From this, it can be seen that in addition to traditional illegal activities such as posting to fabricate and spread false information, the aforementioned regulations also include behaviors such as deleting posts, liking and recommending, interfering with information presentation in other ways, traffic fraud, traffic hijacking, and registering false accounts that wander in gray areas. Because the high frequency of forwarding, liking, complaining and reporting of specific content through human intervention will directly affect the presentation of relevant content, leading to a sharp rise or decline in the popularity of these content, while the purposeful untrue evaluation will more directly affect the authenticity of relevant content, and false praise and liking of specific goods, films and television works, etc. will constitute a fraud to consumers. All of the above actions will interfere with and mislead the Internet order, affect the economic order and social order, and therefore constitute illegal acts.

To sum up, it is not illegal for normal Internet users to forward, comment on, and like a work out of their true intentions without obviously misleading others. Entrusting or accepting the commission of others to engage in prohibited behaviors as stipulated by the aforementioned laws will result in legal liability.