How difficult is it to find out who is behind the cyberbullying? [Hangzhou "pink-haired girl" died in cyberbullying. However, as a phenomenon, cyberbullying is not easy to define, obtain evidence and protect rights]
● People who participate in cyber violence hide behind the "fake names" on the Internet. When they insult or slander, they may not realize that it is a cruel thing and that they may be a cruel person.
People always use the established stereotypes in their lives to comment on others, and this impulse is amplified, recorded and disseminated by the anonymous nature of the Internet.
● At present, there are certain difficulties in defining cyberbullying: one is the nature, that is, what kind of language is considered an insult; the other is the subject, that is, who determines cyberbullying
● The platform should be jointly and severally responsible for the spread of obvious defamation and rumors.
Since the infringement of the right of reputation is basically a crime of "handling only after being informed", it is impossible to solve a common problem by relying only on the individual lawsuits of the victims of cyberbullying. The platform must bear the responsibility of maintaining the civilization of the public space
● Pay attention to improving people's moral cultivation, media literacy, and legal literacy, especially minors.
At the same time, special legislation on cyber violence is carried out, including specific and clear regulations on the identification standards of cyber violence, the division of responsible subjects, and how to deal with cyber violence.
□ Our reporter Zhang Shoukun
Zheng Linghua passed away.
On February 22, lawyer Jin Xiaohang, attorney of Zheng Linghua's former reputation case, publicly stated that he "was once again entrusted by Zheng Linghua's family, and sadly informs you that student Zheng passed away on January 23, 2023".
The 24-year-old girl with pink hair shared the good news of her admission to graduate school in front of her grandfather's hospital bed in July last year, and posted it on social platforms with pictures.
The original warm scene, but after it was released, it attracted a wave of online violence: "accompanying the wine girl", "falsifying academic qualifications", "eating human blood steamed buns", "red-haired monster"...
During the six months of being bullied by the Internet, Zheng Linghua posted more frequently on social platforms than in the past. The content included her progress in suing rights protection, sharing her daily life and learning experience, and her diary of actively resisting depression after being hospitalized due to depression.
However, it is not easy to win the battle against online violence.
After months of battling an "invisible" cyberbully, the otherwise bubbly girl took her own life.
This tragedy is deplorable, and what is even more deplorable is that similar incidents have occurred repeatedly in recent years.
On February 15, the wife of "Guan Guan", who became popular by driving a tractor to Tibet, released a video saying that her husband committed suicide by taking pesticides during the live broadcast due to long-term Internet violence, and shouted "black fans" to voluntarily surrender.
On January 24 last year, Liu Xuezhou, a boy looking for relatives in Hebei, posted a long post on Weibo, telling about his life of being betrayed by his biological parents, dead of his adoptive parents, bullied and molested by the school, and raped by the Internet, and then committed suicide in Sanya.
Regarding cyber violence, our country has always adhered to "zero tolerance". It is emphasized that those who infringe on personal information and incite online violence to insult and slander shall be investigated for criminal responsibility in accordance with the law; the Supreme People's Procuratorate also emphasized that crimes that seriously endanger social order and violate civil rights such as online defamation, insults, and infringement of citizens' personal information shall be strictly prosecuted.
Under heavy blows, why is cyber violence still repeated?
Where is the difficulty in defending the rights of victims?
And how to put an end to cyberbullying so that tragedies never happen again?
Around these issues, a reporter from the "Rule of Law Daily" conducted an interview.
After the cyberbully hides the screen
The victim of violence is hard to resist the torrent
The reporter noticed that Zheng Linghua's photos posted on social platforms were quickly spread on the Internet after being "ported" by some people.
There is a marketing account with the subtitle "Grandpa cried after being admitted to Zhejiang University", selling undergraduate training courses; there is a marketing account that is a picture, saying that she is a "accompanying girl", "falsified academic qualifications", and "eating human blood steamed buns"; Others attacked her for her pink hair, labeling her a "fairy" and a "red-haired monster".
Although Zheng Linghua later dyed her hair black, the slander did not disappear.
After Zheng Linghua's death, another "Keyboard Man" commented: "This girl is so fragile" "Just keep it for yourself as a souvenir, why post it?" "I guess most cyberbullyers are male/female Let’s go” and other inciting remarks, many people in the comment area quarreled.
"Cyberbullying is a phenomenon, not the speech of a single person or a specific number of people. This means that many unidentified speakers from all corners of the Internet point to the same object and have the same nature but the content may be different. These speeches converge into a media environment that causes pain, humiliation, and fear to the recipients of the speeches, and causes them to suffer great physical and mental harm." Li Danlin, a professor of law at the School of Cultural Industry Management, Communication University of China, said.
She pointed out that the consequences of cyberbullying are far greater than the sum of individual speeches.
If the speech of a single individual has not yet reached the level of violating the Public Security Management Punishment Law or the Criminal Law, the law cannot pursue legal responsibility for the person who made the speech, but the violent media environment itself is not the object of the law.
"It's like a thinly dressed person who suddenly falls into a blizzard environment, gets lost and even freezes to death. Although every snowflake is a factor that constitutes a blizzard environment, you can hardly tell which snowflake caused him to get lost and freeze."
According to Zeng Zhi, a researcher at the Journalism and Social Development Center of Renmin University of China, those who participate in cyber violence hide behind the "fake names" on the Internet. When they insult and slander, they may not realize that it is a cruel thing. is a cruel man.
When encountering similar things in real life, cyberbullyers mutter to themselves in private, and it may not matter, but comments made on the Internet can become cyberbullying.
The reason is that people always use the established prejudices in their lives to comment on others, and this impulse is amplified, recorded and disseminated by the anonymous nature of the Internet.
"The Internet completely eliminates the distance between people, and creates an environment that pretends to have friends around through instant replies. The contents and methods of sharers seem to be talking to friends, but in fact they are 'spreading' with strangers (i.e. communication style that doesn’t ask for a response or get a meaningful response) – bloggers may get responses that are out of context, misinterpreted, and victimized by stereotypes. The Internet’s gossip is never stopped, never forgotten, and no one Normal people can resist a situation where they are always in the torrent of public opinion." Zeng Chi said.
Evidence is hard to find, rights protection is not easy
It is very difficult to control cyberbullying
After being harassed by the Internet, take the time to save evidence and call the police, will the problem be solved?
The reporter noticed that in real life, those who have been victimized by cyberbullying often have a long way to go to defend their rights, which may take half a year or a year, and in the end it may not have much effect.
According to public reports, Zheng Linghua chose to call the police as soon as she found out that her rights had been violated. The police’s suggestion was to find a platform to complain, and then Zheng Linghua found a social platform to defend her rights, and then contacted the media for a complete report and clarification of her incident. Went to the notary office to publicize some evidence.
He has done everything he can, but his attorney said, “It is difficult to obtain evidence in actual operation, the cycle is long, the cost of rights protection is high, and it is not easy to lock the actual infringer.”
More than half a year has passed, and the case has still not made substantial progress.
The reporter contacted a staff member of the short video platform, who told the reporter that not only the platform, but also many other platforms have been doing a lot of research on cyber violence, and have introduced relevant measures in terms of prevention and management, such as one-key anti-riot function, Psychological care team, intercepting information and punishing accounts, etc.
But at the same time, he admitted frankly that it is very difficult to govern cyber violence.
"First of all, it is difficult to judge whether it is online violence. The identities of the interlocutors are different, and the violent attributes in the language are completely different. Parents and friends may think it is a joke, but it is bad language when it is used by strangers. And different people treat The feeling of online language is different, it is highly subjective, and it is difficult to quantify the standard and identify it uniformly.” The staff member said that the key is, if there are bad comments, should they be protected from the very beginning, or should they be protected from the specific article? Whether the method of protection is to silence the other party or ban the account or even deal with it through judicial procedures, there is neither and it is difficult to formulate a standard.
He also pointed out that the time for large-scale cyberbullying is often very short, and the content of cyberbullying has become particularly obscure now. Abbreviations, homonyms, P-pictures, etc. emerge in endlessly, and it is difficult for machines to fully identify them. Cyberbullying comments are not easy.
Moreover, a considerable part of the cyberbullying scenes took place in private messages, and any interference may involve violation of user privacy.
Many interviewed experts also pointed out that there are certain difficulties in defining cyberbullying.
Zeng Zhi made a specific analysis: One is the nature, that is, what kind of language is considered an insult.
People's speech habits are not black and white, and what can cause harm to people includes ridicule, sarcasm, and sarcasm, in addition to offensive words that are directly insulting.
The existence of gray language makes the definition of "violence" a subjective matter.
This can be seen from many people's incomprehension of the Zheng Linghua incident - "It's good to just laugh it off when encountering cyber violence" and "I can't even bear this little pressure".
Unless it causes serious personal, social and national harm, the crimes of insult and defamation are crimes that are "handled only upon notification".
The second is the subject, that is, who determines cyberbullying.
Each platform has its own independent sensitive word filtering database and manual review mechanism, but some platforms often ignore personal attacks on individuals based on their own review costs, and even use and condone cyber violence based on traffic interests.
"Different from physical violence, the definition of verbal violence must refer to customs, habits, culture, common sense, context, relationship, etc., which is quite complicated." Zeng Chi said.
In Li Danlin's view, for a specific media environment, different people have different individual characteristics and have different perceptions of violence in the media environment.
Some people may be more able to withstand the same environment, experience less harm, and feel less violent subjectively. The violence will be very strong, the injuries suffered will be more serious, and even lead to extreme consequences.
"Therefore, there are certain difficulties in finding evidence that the behavior of a specific perpetrator constitutes the objective elements of illegal and criminal acts according to the constituent elements of illegal acts and criminal acts." Li Danlin said.
Internet violence mixed with a lot of rumors
Refuting rumors requires personalized push
In the process of cyberbullying, there is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored, that is, the spread of a large number of rumors.
The reporter found that in the process of rumor management, there is often "one mouth for making rumors, and one foot for dispelling rumors".
Compared with rumors that have spread widely, although there are official rumor refuting platforms and short video rumor refuting platforms to dispel rumors in the first place, the popularity of rumor refuting content is often not high.
In this regard, Zeng holds an analysis. Before knowing that a rumor is a rumor, everyone thinks it is a fact.
And rumors tend to be more novel than other facts, so they are more attractive and contagious.
The root cause of "refuting rumors and running away" may be that what some people want to obtain on the Internet is not the truth, but stories, statements and even rumors themselves.
Li Danlin believes that, to a certain extent, the information carried by rumors is closely related to the interests and interests of the general public, so people who see them are willing to "eat melons" and spread them.
As for rumor refuting information, people who see it may not forward it if they do not have a certain sense of responsibility.
"The rumor-dispelling work still requires the platform to play a leading role. The platform should establish institutional cooperation with government departments and professional institutions, and set up a special regular rumor-dispelling platform on the platform to increase the frequency of dispelling rumors." Li Danlin said.
Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, told reporters that there is a word in the field of dispelling rumors called "reach rate". Usually, the platform pushes the information that users see in a personalized way, and the same is true for rumor dispelling information. Push the rumor refuting information to every user who has browsed the rumors before or is interested in the rumors, highlighting the arrival rate of the rumor refuting information, not just putting the rumor refuting information on the home page for recommendation.
The platform should also strengthen content review. Before publishing user posts, review the authenticity of events mentioned in them that may involve fabrication, slander, etc., and refrain from posting obvious insults.
"It is worth mentioning that the platform must never allow rumors to be on the hot search list." Zhu Wei said.
Improve legal clarity
Platform Responsibility Fulfilled
According to the staff of the above-mentioned short video platform, many platforms have launched relevant policies for cyber perpetrators and victims.
For some comments judged to be inappropriate by the model, the platform will repeatedly remind users with functions such as online warnings and positive guidance.
Strangers are restricted to only send one message to a single user at a time. After the user replies, the stranger can have a temporary conversation with him. The validity period is 24 hours. After the timeout, re-apply and try our best to block inappropriate comments.
For victims, the "one-click anti-riot" function was launched to increase the entrance for users to report cyberbullying behaviors, provide online comments for users, set private message permissions, and block keywords in comment areas, etc., build a psychological team, and actively contact those who may be at risk of cyberbullying user etc.
In Zhu Wei's view, although the platform has introduced relevant measures, such as "one-click anti-riot", in fact, strangers cannot comment privately, but this cannot stop strangers from posting online violence.
Therefore, for how to prevent riots, the platform should continue to explore and improve related functions.
Several interviewed experts pointed out that cyberbullying, as a phenomenon, may be difficult to eradicate in a short period of time, but it can be resolved from the aspects of technology and education.
"The platform should be jointly and severally responsible for the spread of obvious defamation and rumors. Since the infringement of the right of reputation is basically a crime of 'telling', it is impossible to solve a common problem by relying solely on the individual lawsuits of the victims of cyberbullying. The platform must assume the responsibility of maintaining civilization in the public space." Zeng Chi said.
In November 2022, the Central Cyberspace Administration issued the "Regulations on the Administration of Internet Post Comment Services", requiring all Internet platforms to follow the principle of "real name at the background, voluntary at the front desk" to register users based on mobile phone numbers, ID card numbers or unified social media. Authentication of real identity information in the form of credit codes, etc., shall not provide post comment services to users who have not authenticated their real identity information or falsely used the identity information of organizations or others.
Zeng Zhi believes that, from this point of view, the real-name system has actually been implemented.
If it can be implemented, once cyberbullying really becomes a crime, it is not difficult to locate cyberbullyers based on criminal investigation techniques such as IP addresses.
"Cyber violence is actually a modification and extension of real violence on the Internet. Verbal violence against individuals abounds in reality, but it has a unique situation, so the scope of spread will not be too wide, and it will not cause scale effects. It is easier to self-dissolve and forgive each other. In addition to strengthening the management of the country, society, and platforms, Internet speakers should be aware of such a thing, that is, anyone’s sharing may be praised or slandered, but regardless of the feedback received Whether it is positive or negative, you should not expect too much from people who don't know you." Zeng Chi said.
Li Danlin suggested that whether it is school education or media environment governance, we should start from the perspective of emphasizing education, instilling and cultivating respect for the human dignity of others, and at the same time carry forward the concept of "don't do to others what you don't want to be done to others" in excellent traditional culture, and improve people especially The moral cultivation and media literacy of minors.
The speakers of the speeches that constitute the cyberbullying environment are not necessarily malicious, but because people have been influenced and influenced by the long-term "just violence" and think that they have reasonable motives such as moral legitimacy, they can occupy the moral high ground, Don't choose words.
He believes that at the same time, it is also necessary to raise public awareness of the rule of law, knowing that the boundary between violating ethics and morality and breaking the law may be broken at any time.
Online communities, non-profit organizations in the real world, and schools can also establish special mechanisms to provide psychological and life assistance to victims of cyberbullying.
"Cyber rioters should bear legal responsibility, but it may be difficult at the law enforcement level at present. The Internet has memories that can be traced. It is necessary to distinguish between the original rumor makers and those who fabricated facts, and the 'accomplices' who forwarded more views and unknown Truth passers-by, etc., for those who meet the penalty standards, even if there are many people, they should be punished as they should be.” Zhu Wei said.
He suggested special legislation on cyber violence, including specific and clear regulations on the identification criteria of cyber violence, the division of responsible subjects, and how to deal with cyber violence.
"Only by truly achieving 'zero tolerance' for cyberbullyers and allowing them to be truly punished can we promote the awareness of anti-cyber-violence and rights protection in the whole society," Zhu Wei said.
"Rule of Law Daily" February 23, 2023, version 04