In 2021, the live broadcast will show endless chaos
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Rhino Entertainment” (ID: piaofangtoushijing), author: Rhino Entertainment Editorial Department.
Text｜Founder Editor｜Xia Tian
Live rewarding has always been a news point that the media loves to chase.
“Poverty students loan more than 100,000 yuan to reward female anchors in Nanjing”, “16-year-old teenagers rewarded female anchors of 1.58 million in 3 months”, “post-90s male cashiers misappropriated 48.26 million public funds for rewards”… Over the years , Negative news about huge rewards emerges endlessly, and the logic of the parties’ behavior challenges the public’s moral bottom line.
A few days ago, the topic of #央视直播网络直播打赏乱象# appeared on Weibo’s hot search. CCTV News Channel detailed the chaos of today’s live streaming, such as finding fake fans, falsifying traffic data, etc. . Under the guidance of platforms, MCNs, guilds, anchors, and fan support, the water friends frantically brushed gifts to show their favor to the young lady, which reminded people of the fear of being beaten and dominated by the fans.
Similar to the logic of the fan circle leader urging fans to krypton gold, the reward behavior of water friends is often deliberately induced, the anchor’s “sweet talk”, the “cheating ticket” when connecting Mai PK, and the competitive atmosphere of big fan support Rendering, etc., will push the water friends who watch the live broadcast step by step into the abyss of addiction and madness.
From the early show live broadcasts to the short video live broadcasts, the chaos is endless. “Keiko ssica” with 2960.1w fans on Douyin was listed as a typical case by CCTV. But at the same time, official departments, live broadcast platforms, and public opinion have never stopped their supervision. Recently, the leading internet celebrity Yin Shihang of Kuaishou was banned by the platform for 630 years due to “vulgar hype on engagement live broadcast”.
Similar to the fan economy, live streaming rewards are morally unacceptable to the public. Comparing rewards promotes bad social trends and seriously misleads young people’s consumer outlook and values. However, because it does not violate the bottom line of the law, it is difficult to monitor it. small.
The reward routine is as deep as the sea
Now we have entered the era of “Live +”.
On the one hand, according to the “2020 China Online Performance (Live) Industry Development Report” just released, my country’s webcast industry has over 130 million anchor accounts, and the number of webcast users has reached 617 million. The live broadcast industry is booming; On the other hand, live broadcast is now a just-needed function of various online entertainment platforms, and live broadcast areas have been added to graphic communities and music streaming media.
However, the generalization of live broadcast has not brought about the exquisiteness of live broadcast content, and vulgar live broadcast pollutes the content environment of various platforms. The “legacy” of the reward routine inherited from the show live broadcast has also invaded various platforms in an all-round way.
On the hottest live broadcast platforms such as YY and Douyu, the union-led annual festivals and fan festivals caused netizens to fall into the “reward competition”, and the anchor was dragged into the capital operation and turned into a money-making machine. Nowadays, the show live broadcast industry is cooling down, but its “reward routine” has changed its appearance and reborn on various platforms.
First of all, there is a resurgence in live broadcast content that contains sexual hints. Open today’s B station, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms, or live broadcasts with exposed clothing, or aiming at a certain part of the body, or performing sexy house dance, or coaxing an otaku to sleep are everywhere, and they are available on the recommended homepages of these platforms. Can be swiped frequently.
Secondly, “Anchor Online PK Game” is the mainstream live broadcast game nowadays. The rule is how many gifts are given by PK fans within the specified time between the two parties of the connection, and the loser will be punished. According to CCTV exposure, this game alone contains various rewarding routines that have been carefully designed.
“Ticket fraud” is one of the unspoken rules. First, the online anchors are mostly “arranged company members”, and the two parties pretend not to know each other, and sometimes deliberately create drama conflicts to fill their popularity; secondly, the MCN team will arrange “Fake local fans” brush gifts to create a competitive atmosphere, thereby tricking the leeks to follow the trend and reward them.
Furthermore, the data in the live broadcast room can also be falsified. The “multiplier” operation can make the number of online people reach a thousand times or more than the real data, which will increase the price of the anchor while increasing the psychological price of the fans for brushing gifts. Douyin’s “Supreme Salute” with a price tag of 66666 Douyin coins is equivalent to RMB 9,523. Keiko received more than 30 “Supreme Salute” in a live broadcast, and his ability to cut leeks is astonishing.
Among the users who gave her rewards, an account called “Master” gave over 80 million gifts. Many people think that the local tyrant has a deep background and mysterious origin. However, according to many media surveys, among the local tyrants who give high rewards like the master, many of them may not be true local tyrants, but just ordinary office workers.
The reason why they sink into it, they even borrowedMost of the money and loan rewards were PUA by the controllers of the live broadcast room. When the water friends reward a certain amount, the union or MCN will pull them into the management group to participate in the maintenance of the order in the live broadcast room. Over time, they have established the “revolutionary sentiment” of carrying guns and fighting together.
When you have accumulated fame and status in the live broadcast room, you will have small fans to follow when you are promoted to the administrator, and the emotional connection with the anchor will become deeper and deeper, and the sunk cost of your withdrawal will become higher and higher. At this time, if you With the initiation of retreat, the water friends around you will use various methods to retain you, and you will eventually sink deeper and deeper under the pressure of betrayal.
From this point of view, the live rewards may be regarded as an “advanced version” of the fans’ rewards. The platform, MCN, anchor, and Fantuo teamed up to create a live broadcast room filled with pink bubbles to induce rewarding users to enter the rewarding circle kidnapped by collective emotions, fostering the trend of social comparison, and especially misleading minors.
What is the executive power of supervision?
Faced with the scourge of “rewarding chaotic elephants”, the government agencies and platforms have never slackened its supervision over it. In the past two years, officials have repeatedly attacked it.
At the beginning of June last year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television took the lead in issuing a notice on the “National Cyberspace Administration and other 8 departments to carry out special rectification actions for the webcast industry”. The first article mentioned that “rewarding live broadcasts that are strongly reflected by netizens will seriously impact the mainstream. Value issues, multiple departments will initiate related actions.”
At the end of June, the National Cyberspace Administration of China conducted a comprehensive inspection of the content ecology of 31 major domestic live broadcast platforms. A total of 10 platforms, including Huya, Douyu, and Station B, had problems spreading vulgar and vulgar content. Measures such as the suspension of main channel content updates, suspension of new user registrations, and deadline rectifications have been implemented.
By the end of November, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a notice on “Strengthening the Management of Online Show Live and E-commerce Live Broadcasting”, which for the first time clarified “the function of blocking rewards for underage users” and refined the “restricted rewards” Rules: First, adopt methods such as face recognition to implement real-name management for anchors and users. The second is to limit the user’s maximum reward amount per time, daily, and monthly. Too many rewards will result inSend a text message to remind you that the reward function will be suspended if the limit is exceeded.
In February of this year, the National Internet Information Office and other seven departments jointly issued the “Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Standardized Management of Webcasting”, and for the first time proposed the details of setting up a “reward cooling-off period” and “delayed account period” Initiatives.
Of course, the so-called “policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom”, even if the government has explicitly prohibited minors from rewarding, there are still smart children who use adult ID cards to bypass the “youth mode” and continue their rewarding “career”. The effect of the above-mentioned measures is greatly reduced. So let us see what the platform has done in response to the policy.
In June last year, Douyin responded to the official call and promulgated a new rule that “minors privately give rewards and can be refunded in full after verification.” In April of this year, Douyin revealed on the media open day that a total of 36,000 minors had been refunded in 11 months, with an average refund time of 19.7 hours.
Furthermore, the efforts of various platforms to control live broadcast violations are also strengthening. In November last year, Kuaishou issued a special regulation violation announcement on “Scripts, Acting and Buying Goods”, banning accounts or fines for anchors who used family conflicts and other elements unrelated to merchandise sales to hype and induce fans to buy merchandise.
A few days ago, Yin Shihang, who was banned from “hype engagement live broadcast”, may be based on the above regulations. However, since the announcement last year, Yin Shihang has repeatedly taken the risk of live broadcasting and harvesting traffic, which proves that the platform has “ambiguous handling” of such live content, and the enforcement is doubtful.
The reason is that although the platform responds to the official call on the surface, in view of the sharp increase in business income brought by the live streaming rewards to the platform, the platform has a “close one eye and one eye” in the supervision of the live broadcast of the high-traffic anchors. .
Some netizens believe that “completely banning the function of live streaming” is the ultimate solution, otherwise any regulatory measures will only treat the symptoms and not the root cause. However, in the face of an emerging live broadcast industry that is close to a “trillion-billion market scale”, rewarding is the core of the industry’s business growth, and a complete ban is tantamount to drawing a salary from the bottom.
Rewarding is a means, not an end
Live rewards are indeed a powerful tool to increase revenue for all platforms at the moment.
Whether it is a short video, a Chinese video, or a music platform, in the financial reports announced by each company, the live broadcast rewards are an important part of their business income structure. The “graphic community” knows that last year it even used live broadcasts to broadcast rewards. Reward has opened up a new way of realizing and has become a key factor in boosting its listing this year.
Live broadcast rewards are “very fragrant”, but if you allow the vulgar live broadcast content to overflow, the user accidentally enters the vulgar live broadcast room when checking the APP, and the damage to the user experience is devastating. Therefore, make good use of the live broadcast The reward function tests the operational wisdom of each content platform.
A paradox facing the platform here is that “vulgar live content” and “maliciously inducing rewards” are not illegal in themselves and face moral condemnation at most. There is no reason for the platform to ban them, which will affect the UGC content of the platform. His creative freedom caused a blow.
However, based on the consideration of the long-term development of the platform, if the “means” of live broadcast rewards are regarded as the “purpose” of the live broadcast business, it will inevitably lead to the phenomenon of “bad money driving out good money” in which vulgar content invades boutique content. This is Human nature dictates. For example, on platforms such as Netease Cloud and Zhihu, which focus on high-quality content and high-end users, it is now easy to access the recommended portals for house dance and sexually suggestive live broadcasts, which hurt the high-quality community atmosphere that has been operating for many years.
From the perspective of users, “repeating gifts for show hosts” is the same behavior as “fan circle fans buying albums for idols”. The high consumption has not been exchanged for high value-added services, which is illusory. The emotional payment premium is essentially an unconscious group carnival, not a healthy business model.
From the perspective of the future development of the live broadcast industry, the inferior content industry that induces rewards will not bring glory to the live broadcast industry, only high-quality live broadcast content. For example, in recent years, Douyin has made great efforts to produce “Coffee Tune”, “Qi Wei’s Dressing Room”, “De Yun She Long Zi Ke Admissions” and other IP-type star live broadcasts and micro variety shows. They are the core competitiveness of the future live broadcast platform.
CCTV’s name “induce and reward chaos” sends a signal of official efforts to rectify the live broadcast industry. Either responding to policies, or for their own sustainable development, each platform needs to take a longer-term view, re-evaluate the value of the live broadcast business, dare to take a knife against inferior live content, and return the platform to a healthy and green live broadcast ecosystem. .
AKER