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china economic weekly reporter guo zhiqiang | beijing report

one rumor after another involving the company has made zhang fen, the person in charge of public opinion for a listed company with a market value of hundreds of billions, a little annoyed.

"internet public opinion involving enterprises seems to be an unsolvable problem at present. our company still has some resources, channels and professional talents, but we still feel powerless when dealing with corporate public opinion. you can imagine how difficult it is for small and medium-sized enterprises when they encounter rumors involving enterprises." zhang fen said to the reporter of "china economic weekly" with emotion.

many interviewees told reporters that faced with some insignificant enterprise-related news, enterprises have little energy to pay attention. however, some self-media matrices are now repeatedly targeting enterprises to spread rumors and create trouble, spreading rumors to discredit enterprises and entrepreneurs in exchange for improper benefits, which has caused great trouble to enterprises. as the saying goes, "it takes only one mouth to spread rumors, but it takes a lot of effort to refute them."

who is concocting and spreading these rumors? what is their purpose? why is it becoming more and more serious? how does the industry chain behind it seek illegal profits?

online rumors increasingly trouble businesses

in recent years, online rumors have been rampant. according to data released by the ministry of public security recently, since the beginning of this year, public security organs have investigated more than 22,000 cases of online rumors, investigated and dealt with more than 25,000 netizens who spread rumors in accordance with the law, guided network operators to shut down more than 160,000 illegal and irregular accounts, and cleaned up more than 1.322 million pieces of online rumor information.

in addition to the large number of online rumors, they are also showing new characteristics. at a press conference held by the state council information office on august 27, wang qiang, director of the traffic management bureau of the ministry of public security, pointed out: "in recent years, stimulated by the 'traffic economy', the breadth of content, speed of dissemination, frequency of updates, scope of influence, and social harm of online rumors have all increased significantly."

these characteristics are particularly prominent in rumors involving companies.

in june this year, a large medical device company in south china was harassed by infringing information. at that time, one of the company's limb correction products was very popular in the market, but it was maliciously slandered by its competitors online, and the product was labeled as "iq tax".

"after we noticed the public opinion about the product, we urgently released a clarification. in less than two hours, the topic was on weibo's hot search, which was very strange." fang fang, the brand manager of the company, told the reporter of china economic weekly. after investigating and analyzing the public opinion, they found that it was actually competitors who spent money to buy hot searches and artificially create hot topics. "in order to reduce the impact of malicious slander, the company can only spend money to sink the hot search. our company and competitors have been playing back and forth around the ranking of the hot search list. in the end, neither side benefited, but the hot search platform benefited instead." fang fang said.

during the interview, the reporter found that behind the online infringing information involving enterprises, in addition to the subjective malice of competitors, more of it is the deliberate behavior of self-media.

some self-media that pursue traffic and attract attention have pieced together information related to enterprises through malicious editing and dissemination online. a listed retail department store company has been deeply troubled by online rumors. since 2021, the company has been in a debt crisis, and negative information about the actual controller and the listed company has been rampant online.

in late august, peng juan, brand manager of the retail department store, told china economic weekly that as early as around 2021, the company faced unprecedented survival and operating pressure due to debt problems. at that time, many self-media randomly intercepted false information about the company from the internet without verification, and pieced together various rumors, causing the company and its bosses to fall into an endless vortex of public opinion.

peng juan still has lingering fears when recalling: "the company's public opinion has only been slightly stable in the past two years. in 2021 and 2022, i handled more than 1,000 pieces of negative information involving our company through relevant departments. that experience is unbearable to look back on."

who is behind the rumors about enterprises?

during the interviews, several brand managers from large companies and listed companies mentioned that when information about corporate infringements ferments online, there are often people behind the scenes pushing the issue, who use “online water armies” to fan the flames.

this year, an elderly man in a province in north china died during surgery. afterwards, his family found a certain internet celebrity to expose the incident. without verifying the matter with the hospital, the celebrity immediately forwarded the news, which promoted the fermentation of this medical accident on the internet. in less than half a day, this incident quickly became a hot search on weibo.

"after the topic of medical accidents became a hot search on weibo, we discovered the presence of 'internet water army'. in the same period of time, the same address ip concentrated on the weibo comment area with similar negative comments against the hospital. it was obvious that someone was leading the pace and increasing the traffic behind the scenes." wang zhen, the public opinion manager of the above-mentioned hospital, said in an interview with a reporter from china economic weekly that at the time, they analyzed these highly similar comments and speculated that there were internet promoters behind the scenes who were driving the development of public opinion, so they collected evidence online in a targeted manner.

one detail worth noting is that some entertainment bloggers also actively participated in forwarding relevant information. as this medical accident was continuously magnified by internet celebrities, the health department also intervened.

zhang fen told reporters that the internet is open, virtual, and has blurred regional differences. in this environment, on the one hand, it is easy for internet promoters to recruit online trolls, and on the other hand, online trolls are relatively covert when carrying out improper activities and are difficult to detect.

the public security department has severely cracked down on online trolls. "the ministry of public security attaches great importance to this and has deployed public security organs across the country to carry out special operations to combat and rectify online rumors." wang qiang said, "we have dug deep into the illegal and criminal activities of online trolls, mcn organizations, etc. who manipulate and spread rumors behind the scenes. a total of 623 such cases have been investigated and dealt with, and 3,397 criminals have been arrested."

the interest chain behind enterprise-related rumors

in june this year, the cyberspace administration of china exposed a number of typical cases of information infringement involving enterprises. one of the cases is worth noting. the "qiupai" account registered by a cultural communication company deliberately published information that negatively interpreted the annual financial statements of an information technology company, and took the opportunity to coerce the information technology company to sign a business cooperation agreement when communicating with it about the authenticity of the information content.

this situation is not uncommon. during the interview, many companies have experienced self-media extortion under the banner of "public opinion supervision", but they dare not speak out.

"recently, an overseas commercial media wrote an untrue article involving our company. we finally found the person in charge through various connections, and the other party directly asked for 300,000 yuan to delete the article." peng juan said that the company's operations are already under pressure, and the management office does not agree to spend money to delete the article.

peng juan revealed that when she usually handles corporate public opinion, she usually contacts the self-media platform or the author directly first. some infringing articles involving enterprises can be deleted smoothly through complaints, while some rumors may require spending some money and cooperating with self-media to delete.

"we will simply ignore those online media that are unable to do their job," said peng juan.

in march this year, a large manufacturing company in south china also encountered the same "distress". a self-media suddenly published an article about the company's management salaries. the salary data listed in the article were all false, and the article arbitrarily exaggerated the management salary figures.

a person familiar with the company's internal situation told china economic weekly: "after the company's management saw the article, they were very annoyed and asked the brand department to handle it. the brand department communicated with the self-media that wrote the article many times and finally deleted the article."

zhang fen said: "behind the online rumors, some self-media have their own interests. at present, an invisible industrial chain has been formed by paying to delete articles and comments, and even reducing the popularity of weibo. many companies are helpless when they encounter infringing information."

how difficult is it to defend your rights against online rumors?

faced with the negative impact of online rumors, many companies and institutions sometimes have no choice but to sit back and wait due to the high cost of defending their rights.

"our hospital reported the case to the relevant departments based on the evidence we had. but the relevant departments, under pressure from public opinion, asked the hospital not to make a bigger deal out of the matter." wang zhen said that some local regulatory authorities have adopted a conciliatory attitude when faced with disputes caused by online public opinion, which is one of the reasons why online rumors involving enterprises cannot be eradicated.

wang zhen analyzed that it is difficult to file cases involving infringements of rights involving enterprises. on the one hand, the coordination mechanism of relevant departments has not played a role. for example, for economic cases, the relevant law enforcement departments can receive rewards after solving the case, but there are no matching rewards for handling cases involving infringements of rights involving enterprises. on the other hand, the relevant law enforcement agencies will also have concerns about "getting into trouble" when handling cases involving infringements of rights by internet celebrities involving enterprises, fearing that the internet celebrities will direct public opinion to the law enforcement agencies themselves.

during the interview, the reporter learned that in response to online rumors that infringe upon the rights and reputation of enterprises, the relevant departments of a certain province have held several coordination meetings to study and deal with the issue of infringing information involving enterprises, but such cases still face difficulties in filing cases at the grassroots level.

an anonymous person who studies online public opinion told china economic weekly that when it comes to the crime of damaging commercial reputation, determining whether a party has committed a crime from the internet perspective, relevant departments lack experience to draw on. in particular, there is no set of operational quantitative standards for quantifying the direct economic losses to companies.

the above-mentioned person gave an example, saying that one of the criteria for filing a case for the crime of damaging business reputation is "causing direct economic losses of more than 500,000 yuan to others." in order to combat internet-related infringements on enterprises, their company invited a third-party agency in shenzhen to conduct an assessment of the damage caused to the company's business reputation by online water armies and big v's remarks involving enterprises. the assessment report showed that the company's losses reached more than 50 million yuan, but the relevant person in charge of the company submitted the assessment report to the relevant departments and still failed to obtain a case.

zhang fen believes that the difficulty in filing cases for online rumors has further emboldened rumor mongers, and relevant departments should coordinate supervision and intensify the crackdown on rumor mongers.

a person from the propaganda system told a reporter from china economic weekly that when large enterprises encounter online rumors, many of them find themselves in a situation where they are "using a cannon to kill a mosquito". even if they win the lawsuit, it is often difficult for the companies to get compensation except for an apology. and even if they win the lawsuit, the difficulty of enforcement makes entrepreneurs anxious.

"in short, the cost of spreading rumors online is too low, but the cost of corporate rights protection is too high; in addition, the relevant departments generally try to keep things quiet, and entrepreneurs don't want to make a big fuss over trivial matters and affect the normal production and operation of the company." said the above person.

faced with such a situation, relevant departments have also taken action to crack down on online rumors. in december 2023, the ministry of public security held a press conference and pointed out that the public security organs follow the principle of "three strikes and three digs", namely "strike gangs, strike chains, strike ecology, dig behind the scenes, dig financiers, and dig assets", targeting internet celebrities who fabricate and spread false information to "create hot spots", "take advantage of hot spots", and "lead the rhythm", "internet water army" gangs that divert traffic for profit, and mcn organizations (organizations specializing in short video content creation and marketing) behind the scenes, etc., to identify the black and gray interest chains, thoroughly penetrate the industry operation ecology, and continuously improve the ability to crack down on online rumor cases and ecological crackdowns.

(at the request of the interviewees, zhang fen, fang fang, peng juan and wang zhen are pseudonyms in this article)