A couple in China who faked “domestic violence” videos to boost their online traffic have been detained by the authorities. -- Photo: SCMP composite/Douyin
SHANGHAI (SCMP): A couple in southwestern China have been detained for making sad fishing videos about domestic violence on the wife to boost online traffic.
Police in Kunming, Yunnan province, placed the husband, surnamed Cai, and his wife, surnamed Li under five-day administrative detention after they fabricated videos and caused a negative impact on society, reported the mainland news outlet The Paper.
Cai confessed to the police that he was jealous of online celebrities who made huge profits from live-streaming.
In the hope of attracting attention online, he and his wife scripted and performed self-directed short dramas in the videos.
One of their most viral clips showed Li, who was portrayed as being fed up with Cai’s domestic violence, escaped from home but was soon caught by him and restrained in a small room.
One of the couple’s videos falsely depicted the wife as a detained victim of domestic abuse. -- Photo: Baidu
In the video, the woman was seen sitting in a corner of a shabby house, sobbing. Covered with a dirty quilt, the woman asked her husband for food, but her request was rejected.
Cai said he concocted the controversial clips to get more followers.
The couple’s account could not be found on a leading short video platform and it is not clear how many fans they had accumulated before it was shut down.
Since the fake videos went viral on the mainland internet, the Ministry of Public Security listed the task of cracking down on online rumours and cleaning the online environment as a priority for 2024.
In April, the authorities said that police across the country had made more than 1,500 arrests and solved 10,000 cases since the launch of the campaign targeting online rumours.
The Chinese authorities cracked 10,000 cases of fake online content in 2024. -- Photo: Shutterstock VIA South China Morning Post
In September, police in northeastern Liaoning province detained four people for 10 days for faking videos about the miserable family background of one of the group.
Their social media account gained more than one million followers in a short time before they began selling goods via live-streams.
A plethora of accounts were banned for concocting or circulating false information.
A prominent case involved an online celebrity with the alias Thurman Maoyibei who made up a story that she found some textbooks left by a Chinese boy named Qin Lang in a public toilet in Paris.
After the video went viral on mainland social media, the blogger said in another video that she had contacted the boy’s family and returned the textbooks to him.
The series of videos that attracted widespread attention in the country later turned out to be completely fake. The woman’s account was permanently banned after she apologised.
“These online influencers are using any means to attract traffic, ignoring moral standards,” said one online observer of the latest case.
Another person took a similar view: “It is awful to do sad fishing videos. As a result, those people who are really poor find it hard to receive help from the public because many people do not trust others.” - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
