How to effectively regulate the frequent chaos in the short video industry?

Recently, four short dramas produced by Mi Meng's short drama team have been removed from the Internet or banned from broadcasting, including "My Monthly Salary as a Stand-in", "The Black Maid", "Assistant Li is So Beautiful" and "The Black Lotus Manual". The reasons for the removal are suspected of objectifying women and violating public order and good customs, suspected of pornographic and vulgar themes, and extreme revenge themes. Previously, the above short dramas had been broadcast on various platforms and provided paid unlocking for viewing.

"The Black Lotus Handbook" once caused a sensation in the industry. Market sources said that the show's recharge exceeded 20 million yuan in 24 hours. However, as multiple platforms removed the show, regulatory authorities believed that the show exaggerated extreme revenge and violence against violence, confusing the concepts of right and wrong. On the morning of December 13, the reporter searched on platforms such as Douyin and WeChat Video Account, but could not find the short play.

In fact, micro-short drama is not a new term, and it is easy to understand by the literal meaning. Generally speaking, it refers to a drama that lasts from tens of seconds to about fifteen minutes. The reporter found that the track of micro-short drama is very crowded. Short video platforms, long video platforms, and even some platforms that focus on life sharing and knowledge sharing have also launched their own micro-short drama exclusive brands. The profit models of each party are different, but most of them require paid on-demand viewing. When users watch, the first few episodes are usually free, but when it comes to key plot points, they need to pay to unlock. Although some episodes are less than one yuan, the whole drama has hundreds of episodes, and the user's final cost may far exceed a theater movie. On the playback page of some platforms, the "default automatic unlocking of the next episode" option is automatically checked, and the payment can be automatically deducted. If users are not careful, they will be tricked.

Industry insiders said that with the support of "big data", this kind of short drama can basically be pushed accurately. For example, sweet pet dramas are pushed to young female users, and for male and middle-aged and elderly users, counterattack "cool dramas" are pushed. The "2023 China Network Audition Development Research Report" shows that the scale of short video users in my country has reached 1.012 billion, and more than half of them have watched micro-short dramas and micro-variety shows. The proportion of users under the age of 19 is 57.9%, and the adverse effects of vulgar micro-short dramas on young people cannot be ignored.

Media commentator Shen Bin believes that the reason why there are so many vulgar short dramas is that the producers deliberately attract attention for traffic. In this chain of interests, the platform has an unshirkable responsibility, because traffic is an invisible "baton". What kind of platform algorithm, traffic support and distribution mechanism will produce what kind of short videos and short dramas. If the algorithm serves traffic, it is equivalent to opening Pandora's box, which will inevitably point to the dark side of human nature. "Dark" values ​​such as eroticism, gender confrontation, and advocacy of conspiracy theories will prevail.

The Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission issued a notice on December 12 to launch a one-month special campaign to focus on three prominent issues: spreading false information, displaying inappropriate behavior, and spreading wrong ideas. In this clear and bright campaign, the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission specifically proposed to optimize the traffic allocation mechanism, to prevent focusing on indicators and neglecting quality, and to prevent the one-sided use of likes rate, forwarding rate, etc. as the basis for traffic allocation. It is particularly emphasized that the current problem of insufficient presentation of high-quality short videos should be solved, and good works should be supported by traffic.

At present, fragmented reading has become the main way for people to read, and people are increasingly accustomed to quickly selecting and obtaining information. When watching videos, many users browse at 2x, 4x or even 8x speed. They have no patience to watch dozens of episodes of TV series, but choose to watch the plot condensed into 1 hour. It can be said that the explosion of micro-short dramas is also inevitable. There are many excellent works with a brisk rhythm in micro-short dramas. Many leading companies in the industry have turned to short drama creation. The short drama platform "Reel Short" under Chinese Online has also gone abroad and is very popular in the European and American markets. According to data released by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, from March this year to date, there have been more than 350,000 episodes of vulgar and harmful online micro-short dramas. Faced with such a huge output, how to effectively supervise has also raised new issues for relevant departments.

How to achieve long-term governance and allow the micro-short video industry to develop healthily? Shen Bin said that in addition to removing problematic videos, it is also necessary to prevent "lesion transfer", that is, the practice of changing platforms after shooting one. In terms of policy, relevant departments are already improving the corresponding micro-short drama filing and review system. In terms of platforms, they must earnestly fulfill their social responsibilities. The main cost of many micro-short dramas is to buy traffic from the platform. The platform must guard its own defense line and cannot sell traffic to problematic short dramas, let alone collude with problematic micro-short dramas and profit from them. At the same time, in order to make traffic have values, micro-short dramas must shift from the previous traffic business to the production of high-quality content to attract users. Only in this way can it truly become a new format with healthy and benign development.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.