Say no to traffic supremacy and the chaos of "fan circles", what pain points does Beijing's new live streaming regulations solve?
2024-08-10
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On August 9, the Beijing Municipal Administration for Market Regulation officially released the "Beijing Livestreaming Sales Compliance Guidelines" (hereinafter referred to as the "Guidelines"), which are based on existing laws, regulations and departmental rules and regulations, and put forward specific compliance requirements for livestreaming sales platform operators, livestreaming sales room operators, livestreaming sales personnel and livestreaming sales service agencies, totaling four chapters and 31 articles.
The reporter noticed that the "Guidelines" target some current problems in live streaming sales, and clearly state that live streaming sales personnel and organizations must not conduct commercial marketing by violating public order and good morals or creating social opinions. They must consciously oppose illegal and unethical behavior, traffic supremacy, distorted aesthetics, "fan circle" chaos and other bad phenomena; they must not mislead consumers with false statements such as "the lowest price on the entire network."
Do not mislead consumers with "the lowest price on the entire network"
Currently, the live streaming sales model is showing a rapid development momentum, but the consumer rights protection issues it has caused have also continued to occur frequently. According to data released by the State Administration for Market Regulation, the scale of the live streaming e-commerce market has increased by 10.5 times in the past five years, and the number of complaints and reports about live streaming sales has also increased year by year, with an increase of 47.1 times in five years.
Liu Xu, a special researcher at the National Strategy Institute of Tsinghua University, said in an interview with the Beijing News that the more prominent problems in the process of "live streaming with goods" include false propaganda, price fraud, lack of after-sales service guarantees, and marketing in a way that violates public order and good customs, blindly pursuing traffic and attracting user attention. The "Guidelines" basically responded to these problems.
The "Guidelines" clearly state that if a promotional activity has additional conditions or time limits, the conditions or time limits must be clearly publicized, and false or misleading commercial advertising for goods or services must not be made, and consumers must not be misled by false statements such as "the lowest price on the entire network."
After the dispute between JD.com and live-streaming anchor Li Jiaqi was exposed last year, Li Jiaqi's "lowest price on the entire network" caused a lot of controversy. Liu Xu said that now the expression of "lowest price on the entire network" is relatively rare, but there will be some new routines, "such as raising prices first and then lowering prices. In addition, some services that are sold online and fulfilled offline, such as travel photography services, may provide value-added services that are not mentioned during online sales when fulfilling the contract, inducing consumers to purchase value-added services." Liu Xu said that many similar incidents have been exposed, such as the travel photography consumption process includes four links: clothing, makeup, photography, and filming, and there is the possibility of "invisible consumption" in each link. Some netizens shared that "even applying false eyelashes when putting on makeup is charged extra."
Article 25 (III) of the Guidelines clearly states that the price, name, origin, producer information, performance, important parameters, specifications, grade, production date, shelf life and other contents of the goods promoted by live broadcasters during live broadcast activities should be consistent with the graphic information of the goods. Liu Xu said that this article can effectively curb the "low-price routine" behavior in live broadcast sales.
Consciously resist the supremacy of traffic and the chaos of "fan circles"
Data shows that the current number of Chinese netizens has reached 1.092 billion. The massive user base provides a broad market prospect for live streaming. In order to attract traffic, some anchors do not hesitate to go below the bottom line, such as fabricating false scenes such as "poverty alleviation", "helping farmers", "illness", etc., pretending to be professionals in the fields of finance, education, medical care, and even spreading "soft pornography" information to attract traffic.
Article 15 of the "Guidelines" stipulate that operators of live streaming rooms, live streaming sales personnel and live streaming sales service agencies should adhere to the correct political direction, public opinion orientation and value orientation, and shall not carry out commercial marketing by violating public order and good customs or creating social public opinion. They should consciously oppose illegal and unethical phenomena, traffic supremacy, distorted aesthetics, chaos in "fan circles", materialism, food waste, and pan-entertainment.
Article 25 of the Guidelines stipulates that livestreamers should regulate their behavior and promote goods or services to the public in accordance with the law during livestreaming activities. It clearly states that they should dress appropriately and use civilized language, and should not harass, slander, abuse or intimidate others, or infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of others.
Liu Xu believes that the above regulations have relatively prominent practical significance. He said that the recent live broadcast of the Paris Olympics has shown signs of "fan circle culture", which has been disliked by the public and criticized by mainstream media. However, some live broadcast rooms will test the bottom line of violating public order and good morals and engage in "borderline" marketing. "The scale of public order and good morals is difficult to grasp, especially when it comes to the mental health of teenagers and misleading the elderly." Liu Xu said that the "Guidelines" provide a direction for compliance rectification for live broadcast anchors. "In the future, the live broadcast platform itself will need to establish an internal compliance management mechanism, establish more detailed compliance recommendations for different categories of live broadcast marketing services, or hire professionals from various industries to assist in dealing with possible differences in compliance."
Require live streaming platforms to develop a list of prohibited or restricted goods or services
The Guidelines set clear compliance requirements for operators of live streaming platforms. They are required to fulfill their registration and verification obligations, establish and improve service agreements and behavioral norms for live streaming activities, formulate a catalog of goods or services that are prohibited and restricted from marketing on the platform, establish a live streaming information inspection and patrol system, establish a public disclosure mechanism for the results of handling serious illegal and irregular behaviors, record and preserve live streaming information and historical live broadcast information published on the platform, establish a credit management system and credit evaluation mechanism for operators of live streaming rooms, strengthen education and training and management of operators of live streaming rooms, and establish a sound behavior control mechanism.
A relevant person in charge of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision said that cross-departmental comprehensive supervision of "live streaming with goods" has been included in Beijing's list of key tasks for deepening integrated comprehensive supervision. The Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision will take the lead and will work with the Municipal Cyberspace Administration of China, Municipal Radio and Television Bureau, Municipal Public Security Bureau, Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau, Municipal Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission, municipal cultural law enforcement departments, etc. to carry out coordinated supervision to jointly standardize live streaming with goods and promote high-quality development of the industry.
Liu Xu believes that the "Beijing Live Streaming Sales Compliance Guidelines" and the "Shanghai Online Live Streaming Marketing Activities Compliance Guidelines" revised in November 2023 are both refinements of the "Online Live Streaming Marketing Management Measures (Trial)" in 2021. This type of compliance guide mainly guides the live streaming e-commerce market to strengthen compliance self-discipline and mutual supervision in a soft law manner to prevent bad money from driving out good money.
"Compared with administrative law enforcement with a long investigation cycle, this type of compliance guidance can guide practitioners in the live streaming industry to make rectifications in a more timely manner, and terminate behaviors suspected of damaging consumer rights or being detrimental to the physical and mental health of practitioners in the industry as soon as possible." Liu Xu said that when various live streaming behaviors suspected of unfair competition, violations of regulations and laws are "taken off the shelves", relevant practitioners will often pay more attention to improving the quality of live streaming content, strengthening the screening of the quality of goods, improving user experience, and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of users. This will help purify the ranks of live streaming practitioners, allowing those who are truly talented, trustworthy, and truly care about consumers to stand out and make more contributions to promoting domestic consumption growth and boosting domestic economic development.
Beijing News reporter Chen Lin
Editor Zhang Lei Proofreader Liu Jun
