Firm ordered to refund part of service fee over 'negative suppression'

A network technology company was ordered to refund part of its service fee, amounting to 30,500 yuan (US$4,718), due to illegal content relating to "negative suppression" in its service contract, the Changning District's People's Court announced on Wednesday.

"Negative suppression" refers to disrupting fair competition, according to the judge.

The company, in the name of providing "search engine optimization" services, artificially interferes with search engine rankings, making it difficult to find negative information and seeking benefits from it.

In this case, although the company did not delete the negative content, its optimization service artificially interfered with the natural ranking of good and poor comments in search engines by increasing clicks and views, giving priority to good ones while pushing back poor ones.

It also made complaints to the publishing platform of the negative contents, effectively ensuring that the poor comments were not displayed in the search result.

The company was punished not because it did not perform contractual obligations, but because the terms in the contract involved "negative suppression," the judge said.

This "negative suppression" clause violates the legal principle of good faith, and infringes the basic principles of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the Consumer Rights Protection Law, and it damages the rights of search engine service providers, according to the judge.

However, during the trial, both parties believed that negative suppression is not "deleting negative content" and noted that it is not expressly prohibited by law.

While ruling the "negative suppression" clause invalid and ordering the defendant to refund part of the contract fee, the court rejected the rest of the plaintiff's claims.

It is the first time in Shanghai that a court has delineated the boundary between "negative suppression" and normal search engine optimizing services through an online service contract dispute case.

The ruling has an exemplary and guiding significance for regulating online behavior and creating a clean cyberspace, experts said.