The chaos in the auto media sector has been centrally addressed! CCTV: Some public accounts impersonate journalists and have long been disparaging the industry's development.

According to CCTV News, in response to the chaotic online information landscape in the automotive industry, the Shanghai Municipal Cyberspace Administration, together with multiple departments, launched a special rectification campaign in June this year, clearing over 91,000 pieces of illegal and harmful information and handling more than 9,000 non-compliant self-media accounts.

The campaign focused on four prominent issues: maliciously disparaging the market, distorting policy interpretations, illegal marketing and traffic diversion, and inciting irrational rights protection.

The report noted that these non-compliant videos often garnered tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of likes and shares online, but upon verification, all were found to be false information. Regulatory authorities discovered that the accounts involved were not acting individually, but had developed characteristics of professional production, gang-like operations, and industrialization.

To evade regulation, some marketing accounts uniformly customized obscure rhetoric, "talking nonsense with a straight face," making it difficult for regulators and platforms to distinguish truth from falsehood.

A typical case was exposed during the campaign: a public account on a certain platform, without obtaining internet news information service licensing, had long conducted news gathering and editing activities under the guise of a journalist, repeatedly publishing negative false information targeting a certain automotive maintenance platform and persistently disparaging industry development.

After verification, the public account's behavior exceeded the scope of ordinary self-media commentary and constituted unlicensed, non-compliant news gathering and editing activities. The account has since been banned from posting on the platform.

Regulators face considerable difficulty in identifying such non-compliant information. Wu Hongming, Deputy Director of the Network Law Enforcement and Supervision Division of the Shanghai Municipal Cyberspace Administration, stated that the biggest challenges in network law enforcement are evidence collection and classification. The automotive industry has a long industrial chain, numerous brands, intense competitive pressure, and broad scope.

Kong Yan, Deputy Director of the Network Management Division, also pointed out that infringement information involving automakers is highly specialized, with much information mixing truth and falsehood, and employing clickbait tactics or AI-generated content, making verification extremely difficult.

From July to August this year, the Shanghai Municipal Cyberspace Administration launched a series of coordinated measures. On July 21, a compliance guidance meeting for the automotive industry was held, attended by 15 vehicle manufacturers, over 80 dealers, and key platforms.

On July 30, special guidance was provided to automotive self-media accounts with a combined follower base exceeding 5 million, explicitly prohibiting malicious disparagement, policy distortion, and illegal traffic diversion.

Platforms have also been advancing in parallel. Lou Qianli, Executive Editor-in-Chief of an internet platform, revealed that during review, many notes and comments were found to have highly similar copy, and video shooting techniques were identical, showing traces of "black PR." To date, nearly 10,000 pieces of non-compliant content have been cleared, involving nearly 2,000 accounts.

On August 6, the Shanghai Municipal Cyberspace Administration, together with relevant departments, officially released the "Shanghai Automotive Industry Marketing Behavior and Online Information Dissemination Compliance Convention," which sets out self-discipline requirements covering pricing behavior standards, online information dissemination standards, and sales and service conduct guidelines.

Regulators also reminded automakers that when encountering behavior that uses the guise of public opinion supervision to commit extortion, they should promptly preserve key evidence such as screenshots of posts and communication records, report the matter to authorities without delay, and protect their legitimate rights and interests through legal means.