Court sees new cyberbullying tactics

New types of cyberbullying, such as using new technologies or lottery to further harm the victims, has been frequently seen in internet-related infringement cases, a Beijing court said.

The Beijing Internet Court recently issued a report on lawsuits involving online bullying, including those on slandering or insulting others, or infringing upon others' privacy or reputation.

According to the report, between the court's establishment in September 2018 and June, it has heard a total of 465 infringement cases, of which 257 focused on reputation infringement and seven were related to privacy infringement.

"We've also found some netizens aggravate the bullying through online lottery or bullied others by artificial intelligence face-changing software," the court said.

For example, a resident surnamed Li posted a statement on Chinese social media platform to insult a netizen surnamed Zhao. To spread the information, Li stuck the statement on top, adding that internet users who forward the statement could draw a lottery or raffle.

The statement was finally forwarded more than 4,000 times, with over 400 comments. In addition, Zhao, the victim, also received some text messages with ugly words from strangers.

Later, Zhao initiated a lawsuit against Li, saying he had suffered online bullying and asked Li to apologize.

After the case hearing, the court identified Li's behavior as infringing upon Zhao's reputation. It urged Li to make a public apology to Zhao, and also ordered Li to pay for Zhao's mental anguish due to the cyberbullying.

"The online statement posted by Li had already harmed Zhao's reputation, and the lottery Li launched aggravated the harm. It's an obvious fault of Li, meaning Li should be held accountable," the court said.

In addition to introducing the new types of cyberbullying, the court have also called for internet platforms to strengthen real-name registration of their users and optimize technological measures to help block the online bullying.

Moreover, the court suggested the internet platforms set up emergency response systems to delete harmful information and stop users to post relevant contents in a timely manner if receiving cyberbullying reports.