Yesterday, the Shanghai Changning Court held a public hearing on the case of Liu Moumou v. Shanghai Dream Chasing Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Pinduoduo). The court determined that Pinduoduo constituted a violation of Liu’s right to know, and the first instance ruled that Pinduoduo should compensate Liu for 400 yuan in damages. After a long year of tug-of-war, the lawsuit caused by the "surgery" finally came to an end.
#01
Last year, lawyer Liu Yuhang participated in Pinduoduo’s “Free Bargaining” event. Following the platform’s instructions, he first applied for a “super free card” and then selected a mobile phone to bargain for.
Messages such as "You are the first in bargaining progress, you will be the first to bargain" and "You have the best luck" are displayed on the page. Like many users who came into contact with Pinduoduo for the first time, Liu Yuhang believed that he was really one of a million, so he decided to stick with it, recruited friends everywhere, and even bought a bargain card for 9.9 yuan.
Despite being reminded that "you are the first to bargain for progress", Liu Yuhang still missed 0.9%, bringing the progress bar to 100%. Later, he asked many friends to help negotiate the price, and he cut the price again and again, but the 0.9% remained untouched.
Tupinduoduo’s “Good Luck Tips”
After changing several accounts, Liu Yuhang found that the number of routes was the same every time. In the vicious circle of "invite friends to chop a knife", the free mobile phone becomes a carrot hanging in front of the donkey, never reaching the final substantive step. After suspecting that the data on the platform was fishy, ??lawyer Liu Yuhang sued Pinduoduo for violating the principle of good faith and using false data to conceal rules, constituting fraud.
Liu Yuhang’s demands are for Pinduoduo to disclose the true information and data of its activities, return 9.9 yuan to those who purchased the “bargain card”, and compensate them for economic losses of 400 yuan and reasonable expenses of 1,000 yuan.
Through the trial details disclosed, users also learned about the "hidden rules" of "cutting a knife". In court, Pinduoduo explained that the true figure of 0.9% displayed on the negotiation page was 0.9996427%. Because the number of digits shown on the page is limited, they don't show percentages that have at least six digits after the decimal point, which is 0.9%.
Because "the number of percentage digits displayed on the page is limited", the real percentage is hidden, essentially forming a black box in the non-displayed part, making it difficult for users to control the real progress of the activity. In other words, even if the progress bar reaches 99.9%, the unfinished part can still be divided into 654.38+0 million "unit operations" by the platform to induce users.
#02
According to Article 8 of the "Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law" and Article 17 of the "E-Commerce Law", e-commerce operators should protect consumers' right to know. , and disclose relevant information "comprehensive, true, accurate and timely". In this case, Pinduoduo hid data with six decimal places on the display page, causing some disclosure flaws. Although Pinduoduo defends itself by saying that consumers can verify the percentage displayed by combining it with the information disclosed on other pages, in the context of bargaining, it is difficult for ordinary consumers to discover and understand the difference in this percentage on their own.
This results in consumers spending a certain amount of time, energy, connections, traffic and other expenses. Although these losses do not constitute tangible damage to the user's existing property, they are also property in nature and should be protected by the content of the loss.
Based on this fact, the court ruled that Pinduoduo had “informed infringement”, which was somewhat different from the “fraud” Liu Yuhang initially sued. During the trial of the case, Liu Yuhang once stated that the fraud he claimed was that Pinduoduo pushed 6 pieces of fraudulent information to him while participating in mobile phone bargaining activities, and concealed the true bargaining design rules, causing him to I misunderstood the success rate of "getting it for free", so I spent 9.9 yuan to buy an accelerated gift package.
The court held that the existing evidence was insufficient to prove that Pinduoduo sent "fraudulent information" and that purchasing gift packages was only an option for participating in bargaining activities, but not a necessary option. The most important thing is that after verification, the acceleration gift package purchased by Liu Yuhang did have a slight effect, helping him cut 0.03 yuan. The effect basically meets the description of "up to 3-8 people can help cut".
Before Liu Yuhang, countless bloggers and anchors on the Internet also tried to conquer Pinduoduo’s city wall, trying to cut off the last 0.01 with the help of the masses, but they all failed.
In March this year, Douyu anchor Xiao Jie posted a QR code for Pinduoduo’s “Cut a Knife” in the live broadcast room, inviting netizens to win a free card worth 10,000 yuan. At that time, there were up to 60,000 people online in the live broadcast room. As a result, the system directly determined that it was malicious brushing and suspended the activity.
After that, Xiaojie organized fans to send invitations to help cut in the QQ group live broadcast. Two hours later, there are still only "full blessings". As the "60,000 people did not disconnect a mobile phone" incident was fermented online, Pinduoduo responded that "60,000" was the number of people in the online live broadcast, not the number of people participating in bargaining. Xiaojie had successfully disconnected the mobile phone and received mobile phone coupons that night. Sent to Xiaojie's account.
Last year, Weibo big V Lan organized 500 WeChat friends to attack the "cash carousel", and 500 opportunities were lost. On Bilibili, there are many UP owners who have organized hundreds of people to "operate" on Pinduoduo, and there are not many successful cases.
#03
In 2019, Pinduoduo’s GMV transaction volume exceeded one trillion, becoming the third domestic e-commerce platform to break the one trillion mark. It took Alibaba 65,438+04 years, JD.COM 65,438+09 years, and Pinduoduo less than 5 years to achieve this goal. During this period, relying on WeChat’s traffic dividends and its social e-commerce attributes, Pinduoduo grew at an astonishing rate. As of the end of 2020, Pinduoduo's user base reached 788 million, surpassing Taobao for the first time to become the largest e-commerce platform in China.
In the past, scissorhands, advertising, and mobile phone pre-installation have been regarded by the industry as the troika for Pinduoduo to achieve rapid user growth. As an exclusive feature of Pinduoduo, “Chopping” has made great contributions to this rapidly rising e-commerce giant.
But now this "knife" seems not so easy to use. According to media reports, in the first half of 2021, the “Cut One Knife” project was rated as having the lowest internal performance rating of Pinduoduo. In other words, it has lost its appeal to users.
Pinduoduo recently launched a web version with a clean and tidy interface, without any marketing activities related to "cutting a knife".
On the one hand, after the number of users exceeded 800 million, Pinduoduo’s installed base is only one step away from its peak. On the other hand, due to the "one knife" mechanism, some people do not receive free goods or cash after using social resources, which leads to resentment. As Pinduoduo has more and more users, this sentiment has gradually accumulated, making today's "machete" a funny word on the Internet. Some netizens even issued an appeal: "Chinese people should not kill Chinese people."
This may also explain why a case with a target price of only 9.9 yuan has attracted so much attention. After more than a year of trials and five court sessions, Pinduoduo lost the first instance. Although the compensation amount of 400 yuan has nothing to do with Pinduoduo, it is extremely insulting. Lawyer Liu Yuhang’s victory has more symbolic significance in the protection of users’ right to know in platform marketing activities.
Liu Yuhang said on Tik Tok that the most uncomfortable thing Pinduoduo said in court was that because you are a highly educated lawyer, you will not be deceived by this information.
The implication is that people without higher education seem to deserve to be deceived.
Yesterday, after the Shanghai Changning District Court announced its verdict, Liu Yuhang, a Weibo user, said: "It is not an easy task to completely change a marketing activity model involving hundreds of millions of people. It cannot be done overnight and needs to be Step by step. One person’s thinking is limited, and radical change requires teamwork.”
This passage is like a knife on Pinduoduo.
Friends who think it is good, give me a like, thank you for your help!