TV expose highlights widespread online commercial scams

Ti Gong

Ti Gong

Illicit activities by online service providers, livestreaming sites, online search results and Q&A sites were brought to light at China Central Television's annual "3.15" quality investigation program aired on Tuesday night.

The program is broadcast on March 15 every year on World Consumer Rights Day.

Juxiang Entertainment in Harbin of Heilongjiang Province was found to be recruiting female livestreamers and pairing them with male handlers in order to trick viewers to raise funds.

Male employees at the company were using fake identities to chat with male viewers in an alluring manner.

Livestreaming sites were also staging contests where livestreamers compete with each other to attract as many as viewers as possible to donate.

Bytedance's Douyin livestreaming site banned Wu Wu from one of the livetreaming communities at Juxiang Entertainment on Tuesday following the expose by CCTV.

It's also removing online contests featuring "ill-tasted" content to strengthen scrutiny in cyberspace.

iiMedia Research Group estimates livestreaming online shopping was worth 1.2 trillion yuan (US$188 billion)in 2021. But the sector has weak controls of product quality and counterfeits from providers.

A CCTV undercover interview also found livestreamers at the Yongdexiang Jewelry Co have been selling jewelry with fake quality licenses, boasting that it's offering special discounts for viewers.

The Chengze Pioneer Park in Kunming of Yunnan Province went so far as to pretend it's bringing viewers to mining sites in Myanmar and offering deep discounts.

Several Shanghai-based tech companies and the Shanghai branch of a Shenzhen-based tech company were exposed manipulating search results, fabricating comments and Q&A results online.

Consumers often use online search results, comments and articles for their reference to make judgements, but some seemingly reliable information was actually manipulated, the program said.

Charges range from several thousand yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan.

EIMS, a Shenzhen-based Internet technology company, claimed it had served 120 listed companies and 560 leading industry firms.

A manager surnamed Yan of the company's Shanghai branch said questions and answers that netizens found online when seeking help on cyberspace were "made up" by many of these companies, pretending to be real users.

As an example, Yan showed a Q&A promoting a metaverse product. The question was about virtual real estate investment and the reply claimed it was a booming market and the replier had made investment via a company's platform.

"But nobody knows whether there will be a profit," Yan told the program.

Staffers from Trueland Information Technology (Shanghai) Co Ltd and Shanghai Niutui Information Technology Co Ltd exposed for similar practices claimed they had registered many virtual accounts.

And head of the Shanghai office of Sichuan-based Keyuyun Information Technology Co Ltd said the company had hired a large number of Internet ghostwriters to fabricate Q&A online. One had 3,775 likes.

"It is a common practice in the industry and an unspoken rule," the marketing director of the office said.

Companies were also exposed manipulating search results.

A sales manager of Shanghai Dingjiang Information Technology Co Ltd said the company had created more than 150,000 key words for an international school, which were showed ahead of other results when netizens searched for "reliable" education resources.

They even made use of technology to cover up or delete negative reports and complaints online for companies with relevant pages showing the 404 error message.

"The news actually existed, but they were covered up by 404 results," said a manager surnamed Qin with the Shanghai office of Keyuyun.

EIMS was exposed fabricating titles of posts via technical means. "The charge will hit 200,000 to 300,000 yuan if clients required 'refined' work," claimed a manager of EIMS.