Obesity Buster, Sleep Aid... In the live broadcast room of "Divine Medicine" and "Divine Tool", the product review section clearly displays tens of thousands of negative reviews, but when clicked, it seems like they have gone to the wrong set, all accompanied by exquisite "buyer shows" and unanimous praise that says "once used, it can be easily repurchased multiple times". It is not difficult for consumers to notice that after the product review section of the "old" e-commerce platform became more standardized, the negative review section became a "praise group" and the control review "illness" spread to live streaming e-commerce platforms, giving rise to a "new disease": rampant in some "traffic product" review sections that rely on fancy advertising and traffic marketing, inducing consumers to follow the trend and pay. Experts say that the real reviews of online shopping are related to the public's right to consume. Malicious negative reviews are unacceptable, and it is even less feasible to pass off inferior reviews as good in the comment section. We must clean up the online sales environment in accordance with laws and regulations, and protect consumers' right to negative reviews in accordance with the law. The negative review section of "traffic products" has become a "positive review show". On the product page of a "health foot patch" on a live streaming e-commerce platform, there are 23000 positive and negative reviews displayed in the review section. However, when the reporter clicked on the latest review, it was all positive buyer shows that had been "finely decorated". Moisture is expelled, the whole body is relaxed "" I have enough sleep, my complexion is better "" Just stick it and I can become thinner lying down "... Highly suggestive copywriting paired with the merchant's" standard "renderings, some reviews even show follow-up reviews ranging from a few days to several months of use, making it difficult to distinguish between true and false. The phenomenon of "good reviews in the negative review section" is commonplace on live streaming e-commerce platforms, with the comment section of "traffic products" filled with gimmicks becoming the hardest hit area. 62 year old Lanzhou citizen Zhao Xiurong bought a "magnetic anti snoring nose clip" on a live streaming e-commerce platform before the Chinese New Year. The promotion is very mysterious, I just wanted to buy it and try it out, "she said. After receiving the product and trying it out, she found that not only could it not be magnetically attracted, but it also became more difficult to breathe when wearing it. She wanted to write a negative review to remind other consumers not to fall for it, but she couldn't find it in the comment section no matter how hard she tried. Wang Juan, the manager of the cloud service department at Gansu Aidouyun Digital Technology Co., Ltd., introduced that in the era of traffic, the "emotional value" provided by products has become increasingly important in the online shopping process. Merchants use social media platforms such as short videos and live broadcasts to carefully design promotional content. Through increasingly accurate algorithms, consumers are exposed to a large amount of product information that meets their personal "persona" and "emotional needs" in a short period of time, giving rise to "traffic products". And medium negative reviews are the key area for consumers to provide emotional feedback on 'traffic products' Wang Juan said that consumers often habitually check the "lower limit" of the product before placing an order, allowing them to find "good reviews" in the middle and bad reviews, which has become an important means for "traffic products" to consolidate their "emotional value" and leverage traffic. The interviewed experts said that online shopping breaks the limitations of time and space, and product information can be found at a glance, greatly improving consumers' flexibility and freedom in shopping. Therefore, to some extent, e-commerce is more competitive than physical stores. In this situation, some "traffic product" merchants have to take some measures, even resorting to risks to increase sales, hiring online "water armies" to brush orders and control reviews, forming a gray industry chain. In January of last year, the police in Songyang, Zhejiang Province, cracked a major case of "online water army" false fan brushing. In just three months, the criminal gang trained 160000 fake fans, involving a total amount of over 10 million yuan and illegally profiting over 1 million yuan. In October last year, the police in Neijiang, Sichuan Province uncovered the case of the "Internet Water Army" gang, which involved more than 1000 merchants on multiple platforms for "brushing orders and controlling reviews" over a period of more than two years, with a total amount of up to 100 million yuan involved. Associate Professor Wang Hongpeng from the School of Management at Lanzhou University stated that the network water army has already formed a gray industry chain to increase fan base and attract traffic. Their behaviors such as brushing volume, deleting negative reviews, and providing false evaluations have disrupted the healthy trading order of the e-commerce industry, disrupted the fair competition environment in the market, and infringed upon consumers' right to know and choose. Sheng Yuhua, an associate professor of the School of Civil and Commercial Economics and Law of Gansu University of Political Science and Law, said that although the expression of "the right of bad comment" is not directly used in the current relevant laws of China, it is actually a concrete embodiment of consumers' right to know, supervision and criticism in the context of Internet transactions. The E-commerce Law, Consumer Rights Protection Law, and other laws have clear provisions that consumers have the right to supervise, report, and accuse goods and services, and operators shall not fabricate user evaluations to mislead consumers. Sheng Yuhua said that consumers' true negative comments are an important source of information for the realization of the right to know, and also a direct way to exercise the right of supervision. Deliberately suppressing negative comments constitutes an infringement of consumers' legitimate rights and interests. The reporter searched on a certain social media platform and found thousands of strategies for professors on how to "reverse negative reviews". Some posts in the comment section were clearly marked with a price tag to "guide the way": "Copy in 5 seconds, 2 yuan per post". The reporter randomly messaged a blogger, asking for a quote on the grounds of "changing negative reviews". The other party stated that negative reviews "can be covered but not changed", and the fee for positive reviews in the negative review area varies slightly depending on the copywriting, image matching, and account requirements, but the maximum fee for one review does not exceed 8 yuan. The other party also claimed to "be able to increase the positive review rate in the negative review area to over 90% within 24 hours". In recent years, Guangdong, Liaoning and other places have carried out special rectification measures against issues such as "cashback for positive reviews" and "brushing orders to control reviews". Since 2024, the cyberspace administration has continued to increase its crackdown on online water armies, and has seriously investigated and dealt with issues such as recruitment, promotion and drainage, and quantity control and evaluation of online water army organizations. Wang Hongpeng and others believe that although governance has achieved phased results, the difficulty and complexity of uprooting this black and gray production are still severe due to technological iteration and the "self evolution" of the "network water army" organizational model. Experts interviewed on the protection of consumer rights in accordance with the law stated that there have been multiple judgments in cases involving "negative reviews" of goods, which have safeguarded consumers' right to comment. This not only protects consumers' rights and interests, but also maintains market order. However, there are still weak links in the areas of rule of law, technology, and regulation, which constrain the healthy and orderly development of the online consumption ecosystem. Sheng Yuhua believes that although there are currently multiple laws regulating the issue of negative reviews, they mainly target traditional e-commerce platforms and have not yet made detailed regulations on the problems that arise in emerging e-commerce models such as live streaming e-commerce. Wang Xuelian, the general manager of Gansu Huilian Information Technology Development Co., Ltd., has 15 years of experience in e-commerce. She admitted that a clear trend at present is that the comment section of "traffic goods" live streaming e-commerce platforms is indirectly taking on the responsibility of the "second detail page". Under the intentional guidance and "suggestion" of the anchor, customers spend less and less time in the live broadcast room and product detail page, and basically click on the product comment section to browse the comments. Therefore, "beautifying" negative review areas has become an important marketing tool for some businesses. For example, words such as "treatment" and "cure" are sensitive words that businesses cannot mention on the details page, so they take advantage of legal and institutional loopholes and resort to using their fists in the comments section, "said Wang Xuelian. Wang Hongpeng introduced that merchants use backend technology to fold and hide real negative reviews, while also uploading fake positive reviews in bulk, drowning out negative reviews. This phenomenon has formed a fixed routine. There is no technical correlation between text comments and numerical ratings, and this algorithmic loophole has given rise to speculative behavior, allowing businesses to break through platform taboos and promote their products with room for improvement. Wang Juan and others stated that even though some consumers have obtained returns and refunds or even only refund services due to the quality issues of "traffic products", some low-priced, high order, and high profit "traffic products" will choose to give up profits and only "run volume". Consumers may not seem to have lost anything, but in fact, the most valuable thing for businesses is customer information, which can make their next push more accurate. The middle-aged and elderly groups with lower traffic resistance are more likely to become 'targets'. In addition, low illegal costs are difficult to effectively deter criminals, "said Sheng Yuhua. Currently, according to relevant laws, the maximum fine for false advertising is 2 million yuan, which is only a drop in the bucket compared to the profits brought by false evaluations in live streaming rooms. The interviewed experts suggest that in the future, relevant laws and regulations should be continuously improved, and efforts should be made to crack down on illegal activities such as brushing orders and controlling evaluations by online water armies. At the same time, the platform can explore optimizing the e-commerce shopping evaluation mechanism by introducing third-party platforms or secondary evaluation systems, further improving the entry threshold for merchants. In addition, consumers should also keep their eyes open and pay attention to checking the legal and compliant qualifications of products when shopping online, and be vigilant about "traffic products" that receive full screen reviews. Only by ensuring the authenticity of the evaluation system can a healthy online shopping market ecosystem be formed Sheng Yuhua said. (New Society)