Some WeMedia accounts have made a stunning amount of money due to fake clicks and attracted investment.  Photo: FILE

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User-generated media needs a healthy environment as its dividend nears peak scale. Many accounts produce fake stories and inflated clicks. Regulatory departments and media platforms inevitably must address this problem. Content producers and mass users are also indispensable to the mission.

Xigao, article laundering, is the practice of adopting and reorganizing material from other articles. The line between article laundering and plagiarism is blurred, but no particular laws are targeting xigao. “Money laundering is no different from plagiarism,” a renowned WeMedia producer proclaimed in a WeChat public account article, arguing that “one should never copy others’ headings, creative ideas, even examples or crucial sentences.” This battle cry sparked public attention.

Without clear standards, it is difficult to distinguish article laundering from allusion, so original writers find it hard to protect their rights. For example, WeChat launched a function for labeling original articles in 2015, with which users can rat out violators or turn to an online infringement complaint system. Once confirmed, any copyright infringement acts are punished by WeChat. However, existing laws and regulations have failed to define article laundering, so the platform’s decisions on plagiarized articles cause controversies due to a lack of legal basis.
What’s the reason for so many repeated cases of falsification? Huang Chuxin, director of the Journalism Research Office from the Institute of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, attributed this problem to several factors. False content can offer tempting economic benefits. A clear legal interpretation about xigao is absent. People have not yet developed technologies to eliminate falsification. Also, internet users are easily deceived by unethical WeMedia.

Improving counter-surveillance technologies have made it harder for the platforms to detect falsification. Shenyang, a professor from the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, used inflated page views on WeMedia as an example. Fake article clicks used to grow sharply in a short time span, but now technicians can imitate the natural growth tendency, which is harder to identify.

Meanwhile, WeMedia falsification has crept across multiple platforms. “Some platforms, which I never wrote for, have published my original articles first,” said Liang Zi, a WeMedia user, adding that such cross-platform infringement complaints take more time and the results are usually unsatisfactory.

“Such infringement cases disappoint the writers who stick to originality. In a context where bad money drives good money, the content quality of WeMedia will continue to go downhill,” Liang Zi said. Some accounts have made a stunning amount of money due to fake clicks and xigao, and some even have attracted investment from renowned organizations. In contrast, the platform dividend for original-article writers is reducing. “We earn 5 yuan when our articles have 40,000 clicks while 65 yuan when there are 300,000 clicks. Content producers who respect originality are discouraged,” an anonymous WeMedia writer said.

“Prevalent falsification will hurt reader trust in WeMedia and its platforms. Customers will refuse to advertise on unethical platforms for their own interests. If the situation persists, WeMedia will no longer generate benefits, leading to malicious competitions that dwarf quality articles,” Huang said.

Many WeMedia platforms have taken measures to combat falsification. Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media, has targeted fake followers since early 2015. A total of 510,000 accounts were shut down in the following five months. In September 2016, a WeChat update crippled the software that was then being used to inflate page views. Some accounts suffered a plunge in article clicks. In December 2016, China’s AI news giant Jinri Toutiao launched an anti-rumor function by pushing educational content to the users who tended to follow these untrustworthy accounts.

In recent years, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission issued documents to streamline WeMedia management. Also, third-party organizations, such as Rightknights and Kbanquan, have provided new approaches to internet copyright protection.

“WeMedia’s inflated readership and clicks are the same as online shops’ fake reviews and traffic. They are false commercial information and prohibited by Chinese Anti-unfair Competition Law,” said Liu Wenjie, an associate professor from the Department of Law at the Communication University of China. Regulatory authorities should formulate detailed penalties and increase the cost of fraud and infringement, Liu added.

After receiving a user’s application for originality protection, the WeChat system will conduct intelligent comparison based on database information. Articles can only be labeled original when they meet relevant standards. In 2017, this function tested nearly 29 million WeChat articles.

Readers should also participate. They should complain and report the cases of disinformation, plagiarism and false clicks in a timely manner. Furthermore, they need to improve their capability to identify fake information fed by WeMedia platforms.

 

This article was translated  from People’s Daily.

​(edited by MA YUHONG)