Introduction
On January 3, 2024, the People's Court of Yuzhong District, Chongqing Municipality rendered a first-instance judgment in the "group control" black industry case filed by a leading short video platform against Technology Company A: the defendant was ordered to immediately cease acts such as bypassing anti-crawling mechanisms, mass video scraping and reuploading, and fake engagement and account farming; compensate for economic losses and reasonable expenses totaling 200,000 yuan; and publish a public notice for seven consecutive days to eliminate adverse impacts. This is the first effective judgment against short video "group control" unfair competition in Southwest China, drawing clear red lines for technical and business ethics in the industry.
I. Case Overview
The plaintiff platform claimed that its recommendation algorithm and review system, developed with an investment of hundreds of millions of yuan since 2018, had formed core competitiveness, and explicitly prohibited any mass crawling, scraping, or fake engagement through its User Agreement. From July 2022 to April 2023, Defendant Technology Company A sold 527 "group control boxes," enabling a single computer to simultaneously control 128 mobile phones and achieve three core functions: cracking encrypted parameters, removing watermarks to scrape and reupload popular videos, and automatically liking and following to "cultivate" new accounts into 10,000-fan accounts. In May 2023, after an administrative investigation and punishment by the Chongqing Municipal Cyberspace Administration, the People's Court of Yuzhong District filed the case on October 9, 2023, and held an open trial on December 8, 2023. Forensic identification showed that the involved system was associated with 420,000 fake accounts, with illegal profits exceeding 1.8 million yuan. The court found that Technology Company A's official website promoted "bypassing official detection" and "0 account ban rate," demonstrating obvious subjective malicious intent and making it ineligible for the technical neutrality defense.
II. Key Judgment Points (Issued on January 3, 2024)
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Data Rights and Interests: Platforms enjoy competitive rights and interests protected by Article 2 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law for data resources that are "legally collected + long-term invested + monetizable."
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Technical Malice: Proactively cracking or bypassing technical measures and selling related tools constitutes unfair competition prohibited by the "Internet-specific provision" (Article 12) of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law.
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Compensation Standard: Considering factors such as the scale of infringement and the defendant's refusal to submit complete accounting books, the court applied the statutory compensation at the maximum limit and fully supported reasonable expenses, totaling 200,000 yuan.
III. Black-Gray Industry Chain: Three Layers Devouring the Content Ecosystem
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Tool Layer: Group control, cloud control, and modified ROMs, used to batch forge device fingerprints;
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Data Layer: Phone number verification code platforms, account wholesaling, and IP proxy pools, providing massive accounts at low cost;
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Monetization Layer: Video scraping and account farming, live streaming e-commerce, window affiliate marketing, and account trading.
According to the "2023 China Short Video Black-Gray Industry Research Report" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) in December 2023, the annual scale of the "video scraping and account farming" link alone has exceeded 6 billion yuan, forcing platforms in the industry to spend over 10 billion yuan annually on additional review, bandwidth, and legal costs. More covertly, the black-gray industry is reversely "training" algorithms: when scraped videos are mistakenly promoted as hits, original creators are downgraded due to "duplicate" tags, forming a negative cycle of "bad money drives out good money."
IV. Compliance Insights: Platforms, Developers, and Brands Must Each Hold Their Bottom Lines
(I) Platforms: Dual-Wheel Drive of Technology and Law
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Encryption Upgrade: Implement triple verification (dynamic tokens + device fingerprints + behavioral sequences) for key client-side parameters;
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Rapid Disposal: Establish a black industry feature database sharing mechanism with cloud mobile phone manufacturers and app stores to ban identical group control apps within 48 hours;
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Evidence Preservation: Adopt a dual-track model of "notarization + electronic data forensic identification" to conduct real-time screenshots, screen recordings, and network packet captures of infringing accounts, video links, and playback volume curves, while issuing notarized preservation documents and forensic identification opinions to ensure the evidence chain is complete, traceable, and efficiently admissible in court.
(II) Developers: Dethrone "Technical Neutrality"
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Introduce compliance reviews during product design and mark functions that may bypass technical measures with a "red light" warning;
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Establish a customer whitelist and log retention system to prove "fulfillment of the duty of reasonable care" if downstream users are found guilty of infringement;
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Include "anti-commercial bribery + anti-black-gray industry" clauses in user agreements to prevent sales teams from inducing purchases through "gray marketing rhetoric."
(III) Brands and Advertisers: Don’t Let Traffic Become "Toxic Flow"
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Require MCNs to provide account health reports when selecting cooperation accounts, including original content ratio, violation records, and fan growth curves;
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Introduce third-party monitoring to issue real-time alerts for abnormal "like/play ratios" and "comment sentiment polarity";
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Include "black industry joint liability clauses" in procurement contracts, stipulating that MCNs shall pay liquidated damages if the brand is penalized by the platform due to account fraud.
V. Conclusion: 200,000 Yuan Is Just the Start – Ecosystem Governance Has No End
The judgment on January 3, 2024, reaffirms a basic principle through judicial language: technology can advance rapidly, but it must fasten the legal seatbelt. For the black-gray industry, the 200,000 yuan compensation may be just a small cost, but the judicial ruling framework of "data rights and interests – technical malice – discretionary compensation" established by the judgment will become a repeatable judicial reference for similar cases in the future.
For platforms, winning the lawsuit is not the end but the starting point for continuous iteration; for developers, instead of walking a tightrope in the gray area, it is better to build ladders on the compliance track; for every user, every click, playback, and like is a vote for the desired content ecosystem. Only when the judiciary, platforms, developers, and users jointly hold their bottom lines can the short video industry truly move from a "traffic carnival" to "quality growth."
