Take multiple measures to regulate the orderly development of the live broadcast industry
Live streaming platform borrows free online lessons to promote online games
□ Our reporter Han Dandong
□ Yin Yushuang, an intern in this newspaper
Affected by the new coronary pneumonia epidemic, online education has become increasingly popular. In early February of this year, Huya Live responded to the call to "stop classes without stopping", opened a free online course channel, and launched a "learning together" section on the client. Betta Live has also launched an "education" section, with free online courses available.
However, there have been media exposures recently. When you open the Huya live streaming client, various online games and interest options pop up first, and the learning section is placed last. To learn online, you must first browse a large number of games and dating information. There are also a lot of carefully packaged game advertisements on the free online course page, and users only need to click to enter the game. Some students played games during online lessons, and one of the junior high school students spent more than 30,000 yuan to purchase game equipment and rewards on the Huya live broadcast platform.
Huya Live responded that the platform has verified the situation and refunded the complaints about the consumption of minors. At present, the advertisement of Huya Live Streaming "Learning Together" section has been offline.
A similar situation also appeared on the betta platform.
Is it legal for live streaming platforms to borrow free online lessons to push online game advertisements to students? In the future, how to supervise the online live broadcast platform to protect the physical and mental health of minors?
Live streaming platforms are full of ads
Online courses become drainage tools
"Legal Daily" reporters investigated Huya and Douyu respectively. The Huya platform has removed the "learning together" column of online courses for minors. The content of the "learning together" column currently reserved mainly faces adults, including psychology, history, and computer software operations.
At present, Huya has also set up a special youth mode, which is enabled by a password. In the youth mode, there are restrictions on the use time, functions and viewing content. In terms of time, it is unavailable from 22:00 to 6:00 every day. After a cumulative time of more than 40 minutes in a single day, the guardian needs to enter the password to activate it again. Teenagers cannot perform interactive operations such as recharge, purchase redemption, barrage comment, and live video broadcast. In terms of content, young people can only see the education and knowledge content selected by the platform.
"Legal Daily" reporter opened the youth mode for verification, and found that the content that teenagers can access is relatively limited. The original games and dating content can not be watched. Only the limited content recommended on the home page can be browsed. The content of the push involves decoration rights protection, epidemic prevention and control, farm life, and stories of grassroots characters. Although the content is relatively positive, for primary and middle school students, these contents are not targeted and the educational significance is not great.
In the betta live broadcast platform, its recommended sections currently mainly have two sub-sections of "education" and "guardian of growth", involving educational content. The content of the "education" column is similar to that of Huya, which is knowledge content for adults. And under the column of "Growth Guardian", there are still a few live broadcasts of courses for minors, covering elementary school mathematics, high school chemistry, junior high school English, etc., but there are no inappropriate advertisements such as online games on the page. However, whether it is an "education" column for adults or a "education" column for minors, the order of the columns in the recommendation page is still the last. In other words, if you want to browse related columns, you must first cross the sub-columns such as League of Legends, Peace Elite, and Yan Value to enter.
The rules of Betta's youth model are not much different from Huya. The content after opening is different from the Huya platform. It only shows the content under the sub-section of "Growth Guardian" mentioned above, that is, online education courses.
A reporter from the Legal Daily found that the above two platforms have indeed undergone rectification after media exposure, but as far as the current situation is concerned, the setting of their youth model is too simple.
On April 13th, a consumer survey report released by the Jiangsu Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Committee showed that the youth protection models of live broadcast platforms such as Huya, Betta, Bilibili, Zanthoxylum, Kugou, and TT voice were in the formal form. None of the above live broadcast platforms have introduced mandatory real-name authentication regulations. Users of Betta and TT Voice will not automatically jump to the youth mode even if they fill in the age information of minors in their personal data, and they must set it manually.
Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Research Center for Communication Law of China University of Political Science and Law, pointed out that minors lack identification ability, and online games, tobacco and alcohol advertisements may affect their physical and mental health. Huya and Douyu platforms use the attention of minors in online courses to promote content that should not be promoted to them, which is not conducive to the protection of minors.
Zheng Ning, director of the Law Department of the Cultural Industry Management School of Communication University of China, believes that young people’s self-control and discrimination skills are weak, and they are easily attracted and tempted by advertisements, thus shifting their attention from learning to entertainment and interaction, occupying learning time and affecting learning. The effect may even cause minors to "game addiction"; some online game advertisements may induce minors to recharge or reward games, which will not only cause irrational consumption of minors, but also increase the financial burden of the family and damage Family harmony affects family atmosphere. Other bad information on the platform may also endanger the physical and mental health of minors.
Advertisement suspected of illegal
Business promotion ignores norms
In response to the above practices of live streaming platforms such as Huya, Zheng Ning believes that its main purpose is to pursue economic profits and increase user stickiness. On the one hand, advertising can broaden the source of income for them; on the other hand, minors may increase the frequency of use of Huya because of this type of advertising, not only to obtain advertising income, but also to expand the scope of users.
"Huya and other platforms, as Internet media, must know that game advertisements will have an adverse impact on minors, but they do not regulate and restrict their own behavior, which violates industry ethics and violates legal regulations." Zheng Ning said.
According to Article 40 of the Advertising Law, advertisements for medical, pharmaceutical, health food, medical equipment, cosmetics, alcohol, beauty, and online games that are not conducive to the physical and mental health of minors are not allowed to be published on mass media directed at minors advertising.
"Free online courses for online platforms are aimed at minors, and publishing online game advertisements is suspected of violating the provisions of the Advertising Law. Huya and Douyu are online game live broadcast platforms. It is normal for online game advertisements to appear, but in their decision to provide free online courses for minors When serving, you should review the service content of your own platform." Zheng Ning said.
Zhu Wei added: "There is also a special provision in the Advertising Law that primary and secondary schools, including kindergartens, are not allowed to have any form of advertising, especially for some teaching materials, school buses, school uniforms, etc. There must be no advertisements. There is no Internet platform involved, but the online education platform is actually to transfer the classrooms of minors from offline to online. The online education platform is equivalent to offline education places such as elementary schools and kindergartens, so the online education platform should not be Advertise, especially online games that damage the physical and mental health of minors. The actions of Huya and Betta have violated relevant content in the Advertising Law."
In Zhu Wei's view, during the epidemic prevention and control period, online education became the main way for students to take classes. Many platforms changed their business ideas to participate in "Internet + education", which is a very good thing in itself. However, Huya and Douyu promoted online game advertisements during the course of class when they knew that the main body of online courses was minors. This is an act of knowing the law and breaking the law.
Strengthen the supervision of live broadcast platforms
Promote the orderly development of the industry
Earlier, live broadcast platforms such as Huya and Douyu had been punished for issues involving pornography and vulgar content. This time, they also attracted attention for promoting inappropriate advertisements to minors.
In this regard, Zhu Wei believes that first of all, the platform should be strictly punished in accordance with the relevant legal provisions of the Advertising Law, and relevant government departments should also punish these two platforms after the incident. Although the competition between live broadcast platforms is becoming increasingly fierce, this should not be a reason for individual platforms to infringe the rights of minors in order to gain development advantages. The order of the live broadcast industry needs to be further regulated, which also requires the relevant departments to further improve relevant laws and regulations and increase supervision, such as launching special activities.
"In the future, the platform shall manage all types of advertisements. Whether it is an advertisement provided by an advertising alliance, media, or platform member, the platform shall strengthen content review and not push inappropriate advertisements to minors. It is unrealistic to completely rely on manual review for undesirable advertisements or commercial information released by netizens. This requires the intervention of artificial intelligence review technology. In other words, the technical means should be better used to implement the review of advertising content." Zhu Wei said.
Zheng Ning suggested: First of all, for government departments, it is necessary to strengthen supervision from the aspects of improving laws and regulations, and strengthening law enforcement. Not only should the network live broadcasting platform be supervised in accordance with the current "Internet Live Broadcasting Service Management Regulations", but also the scale and influence of the network live broadcasting platform should be investigated, and higher-level laws and regulations should be formulated to restrict it; 1. The National Anti-Smuggling and Non-Working Group is working with other departments to carry out a special six-month rectification of the live webcast industry. Such activities have a significant effect on restricting live broadcast platforms and can be carried out regularly or long-term.
Secondly, the live broadcast platform should conduct a compliance review of itself, obtain operating qualifications, standardize business operations, and raise problems, and promptly cooperate with the administrative department to resolve them to prevent the consequences of damage from further expanding.
Finally, the public should improve their discernment ability and increase their awareness of vigilance. They should realize that the live broadcast platform is in the development stage, and that there is still room for improvement in terms of operating content and types of services provided. Therefore, the live broadcast platform should be identified. At the same time, they should also bear social responsibilities, discover violations of laws and regulations on live broadcast platforms, and promptly report to assist the orderly development of the live broadcast industry.