1. China’s courts are grappling with how to punish “traffic boosting” — inflating views, likes, comments and other engagement to make merchants and products appear more popular than they are [para. 1]. A February ruling by Yangjiang Intermediate People’s Court upheld a sentence of more than five years for an intermediary who arranged over 2.47 million yuan ($368,000) in fake traffic for Douyin users and merchants [para. 2][para. 6]. Traffic boosting has become a specialized industry: intermediaries take orders and pass them to teams that use software, mobile phones and large numbers of accounts to simulate genuine user activity [para. 4].
2. In that case, Su Xian, 29, operated a platform called Huole Network, advertised on WeChat and took a 1% cut from orders [para. 6][para. 7]. He rented the system for 3,000 yuan a year, while its source code had been bought for 150,000 yuan [para. 8]. One customer ran a studio where police found 1,246 iPhones, 513 microcontrollers, 40 optical modems and other equipment [para. 10]. The team charged 30–50 yuan for 1,000 Douyin likes, and by 2022 the price for 10,000 likes had fallen to 110 yuan [para. 11]. Douyin reported the operation after detecting 425 suspicious accounts that watched about 80 million livestreams, liked nearly 600 million streams and posted about 70 million comments [para. 14][para. 15].
3. Police launched a crackdown in August 2022, with 14 people involved [para. 18]. Su was charged with illegal business operations under Article 225 of China’s Criminal Law; prosecutors said he provided paid services without the required internet information-service qualifications, earned more than 20,000 yuan himself and paid over 2.47 million yuan to the traffic-boosting group [para. 19][para. 20]. His defense argued that likes and views are not “false information” within the meaning of criminal law [para. 23]. The trial court adjusted some details but ruled that batch-manipulation software interfered with information presentation, constituting illegal business operations [para. 26][para. 27]. In October 2025, Jiangcheng District Court sentenced Su to five years and two months in prison and fined him 100,000 yuan [para. 30].
4. Six defendants appealed, and a prosecutor then argued the conduct should be treated as false advertising because fake likes and comments mislead consumers and affect purchasing decisions [para. 31][para. 32]. Su agreed to plead guilty to false advertising during the appeal [para. 34]. But Yangjiang Intermediate People’s Court rejected the argument, finding that evidence did not establish illegal gains above 100,000 yuan and that the operation went beyond promoting particular products; it disrupted the online information-service market and the fair competition underlying Douyin’s algorithm [para. 35][para. 36]. The court upheld the illegal-business-operations conviction on Feb. 25, 2026 [para. 37].
5. A similar case ended differently: Yang Mousong ran a platform reselling fake likes, comments and reposts on Weibo and Douyin; transactions exceeded 10.3 million yuan and his earnings topped 1.71 million yuan [para. 39][para. 40]. His charges were changed to false advertising, and in April 2026 a Jiangxi court sentenced him to one year and nine months and fined him 100,000 yuan [para. 41][para. 42]. The contrasting cases illustrate the difficulty of fitting a rapidly evolving online industry into existing criminal law, with the legal characterization depending on whether the conduct is seen primarily as disrupting the online information market or as misleading commercial promotion [para. 43][para. 44]. Lawyer Peng Zhiwei said inflated traffic was previously handled through administrative or civil measures, but more cases now enter the criminal process; he urged authorities to return to the principle of legality and clarify the law as soon as possible [para. 45][para. 46].
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