Cyber spring clean
Chinese authorities recently launched several crackdowns on short video platforms, urging them to perform thorough content reviews. The regulations show how authorities are determined to purify China’s online environment and have so far been successful. D
The rising domestic short video sector has been facing strengthened scrutiny recently following the shutdown of joke-sharing app Neihan Duanzi on April 10, which sparked a campaign to clean up the internet.
One day after the April 10 shutdown, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission asked executives from 18 internet firms to intensify regulation of content on livestreaming and short video platforms.
But Neihan Duanzi, which belongs to Chinese tech giant Jinri Toutiao, is certainly not alone. Other online short video platforms such as Douyin, a clone of its US counterpart Musical.ly, reportedly closed its livestreaming services and comment sections to undergo a thorough content review, also in midApril.
Meanwhile, Kuaishou and ixigua. com, two other short video platforms, have also been required to screen out vulgar content.
Internet service providers should take responsibility to prevent cyberspace from deteriorating into a world full of harmful, false and provocative information, the Xinhua News Agency said on Saturday, citing information from a national conference on the work of cybersecurity and informatization held from Friday to Saturday in Beijing.
Efforts should be made to enhance self-discipline of the internet sector and mobilize all parties to take an active part in cyberspace governance, according to statements made at the conference.
Given such context, China’s short video industry, which still has great growth potential, will experience many structural changes through efforts such as purifying content and spreading positive values, experts said.
Platform shutdown
Chinese authorities have been regulating the livestreaming and short video sectors, with the recent crackdowns mainly targeting newly emerged issues stemming from fresh industry players, Li Chengdong, a Beijing-based industry analyst, told the Global Times.
The recent regulations have put heavy pressure on the industry and have effectively helped purify the online environment, Li said.
“Small platforms in the short video sector have been facing the cold due to recent regulations, and many of them have been closed down,” a 25-year-old woman living in Beijing, who livestreams content online but prefers to remain anonymous, told the Global Times.
She said that these small platforms have less network flow, “so if they want to attract more fans, they may go through the back door, which is why they are being targeted by regulators.”
“But for large and regular platforms, they have hardly been affected,” the broadcaster noted.
“Before the regulations, our videos may have implicitly contained vulgar and erotic content. But after we censored such content from our recently produced short videos, our fan numbers fell largely,” short video broadcaster Yang Xiao was quoted as saying in a report released by bjnews.com.cn.
“The number of fans rose by 40,000-50,000 when we posted short videos in the past, but now the figure is only between 4,000 and 5,000,” Yang said.
Despite strict regulations, the Chinese short video industry will still enjoy growth and many opportunities in the future, but the sector will not be as flourishing as it once was, forecast Li.
Industry growth
From 2016 to 2017, the Chinese capital market favored the domestic short video industry.
For example, Kuaishou raised $350 million in fresh funding led by mega Chinese internet firm Tencent Holdings in March 2017. Also, in September 2017, Yitiao, a Chinese online platform that offers lifestyle video content and retail services, secured $40 million in C-round financing, according to media reports.
China’s short video market is at the infancy phase of rapid growth, with its initial boom starting in 2017. The number of active users on comprehensive short video platforms, for instance, had reached 403.5 million by the end of February, according to a report released by internet data analysis firm Analysys in March.
Also, the market size of the domestic short video sector stood at 5.73 billion yuan ($908 .6 million) in 2017, an increase of 184 percent on a yearly basis, and its value is likely to exceed 300 billion yuan by 2020, read a report released by consulting firm iResearch.
Experts attribute the fast growth of the domestic short video industry to the fact that people in cities across the country are now confronted with rising work and life pressures, so short videos can serve as daily entertainment and a method of stress relief.
“Watching short videos is a necessity in my daily life, as I can find and also share many interesting content on various apps,” a 30-something white-collar worker surnamed Tang told the Global Times on Monday.
“I applaud the recent crackdowns on vulgar and erotic content because these platforms have many teenaged followers who may not be able to easily tell right from wrong and are likely to imitate what they watch in videos,” Tang said.
China had a total of 579 million online video viewers and 422 million livestreaming viewers as of the end of 2017, according to the China Internet Network Information Center, with a large number of those being young people, especially teenagers.
Tang added that users themselves have called for regulation over inappropriate content on such
platforms.
Optimized structure
The online world is suffering from a phase of contamination as more obscene content appears to becoming more popular, said Li Yi, a senior research fellow at the Internet Research Center under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Li Yi told the Global Times on Sunday that “the growth prospect of the short video sector will be sound in the future after the industry’s structure becomes optimized through the screening-out of vulgar and non-mainstream cultural content.”
As such, more mainstream content with positive values will be uploaded to the platforms in the future, Li Yi said.
Jinri Toutiao on Monday announced that it will launch a channel on its app to ensure that traditional culture-related content becomes normalized, including classic Chinese work such as traditional paintings, arts and crafts as well as folk customs, the Guangdong-based 21st Century Business Herald newspaper reported.
As a result, Jinri Toutiao will prompt a certain network flow related to such content, according to the report.
Short video platforms are also expected to invest more in technology and manual labor to establish multiple review systems for inappropriate content, experts said.
Meanwhile, Kuaishou has been collaborating with Zhejiang University to set up new standards for the short video sector through efforts such as studying controversial domestic and foreign cases, domestic news site sohu. com reported in February.
The fates of Neihan Duanzi and other short video apps that have been closed down should urge producers to pay much more attention to regulations and autonomously help purify the online environment, experts
noted.