TapTechNews May 15th news, according to China Central Television News and Shanghai TV series 'Focus on Cases', the Shanghai Cyberspace Administration recently announced typical cases of the 2023 'Clean Up the Pujiang River' special action for network ecology governance. This includes rumors such as 'child missing in Shanghai aged 4, not father's biological child' and 'this is the second time this year' appearing online.
During last year's National Day holiday, the '4-year-old girl missing at Nanhui New Town Beach in Shanghai' incident sparked widespread attention on the internet. During this time, comments such as 'the missing girl was abandoned' and 'the missing girl's father is her stepfather' frequently sparked discussions among netizens, with some online accounts even concocting conspiracy theories and triggering personal attacks. Upon verification, all this information turned out to be rumors.
After the incident, the Pudong police quickly issued a situation report, sharing the progress of the case and investigation, and released information to clarify the facts. The Shanghai Cyberspace Administration and the public security network security department strengthened monitoring of online rumors, urging platforms to address them, and curbing the spread and impact of rumors. It was found that a rumor-mongering water army group in this incident illegally profited more than 40,000 yuan by mass-registering network accounts and reposting and hyping up content.
The report revealed more information about this water army group—false posts were published by over ten self-media accounts including 'Giant Crab Entertainment' and 'Fan Circle Entertainment News'. Further investigation found that the account registrants were employees of a Shandong-based Internet technology company, who had registered accounts on major platforms, focusing on other national social hot topics, posting and reposting articles at high frequency, and using shock tactics, clickbaits, and other means to publish false negative information.
According to Zhang Lin, a police officer with Shanghai Public Security Bureau's Cybersecurity Detachment, the company's executives include legal representative Li and manager Tian. In this hot topic incident, they organized core writers such as Zhou to select hot topics, use AI to mass-produce false posts, and mobilize 30 company employees to post and repost in large quantities using platform accounts provided by the company, controlling a total of 114 network accounts, and continuously releasing 268 related posts. During the period from October 4th to 9th alone, they earned over 40,000 yuan in posting profits.
On October 11, 2023, under the unified command of the Ministry of Public Security, a special task force went to Shandong with local police to arrest the group. Currently, 12 members of the group have been prosecuted and the related network accounts involved have all been banned in accordance with the law.
TapTechNews previously reported that in April this year, the Ministry of Public Security announced 10 typical cases of cracking down on network rumor-related crimes, with 4 involving the use of AI to create rumors.
Since December last year, the Ministry of Public Security has deployed a national campaign to crack down on network rumors. So far, public security organs have investigated more than 80,000 pieces of clues related to online rumors, handled over 10,000 cases of online rumor-related crimes, arrested over 1,500 criminal suspects, administratively penalized over 10,700 individuals, and conducted over 4,200 public debunking events.
In recent years, new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) have reduced the cost of spreading rumors. In 2023, the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the 'Guiding Opinions on Punishing Cyber Violence-Related Crimes in Accordance with the Law', stipulating that those who 'use technologies like 'deepfakes' to di sseminate illegal information' shall be severely punished in accordance with the law.