A 12-year-old girl gave a reward of 110,000 yuan, can the money be refunded? The court ruled this way

Disputes are common when minors use their identities to register accounts, host online live broadcasts, and pay large amounts of money for rewards. So, does the platform have an obligation to screen out minor users who use their identities? After the child tops up the reward privately, can the money be refunded? Let’s take a look at a tipping dispute case concluded by the Guangzhou Internet Court.

The man in the court hearing is the father of a 12-year-old girl, Xiaoya, and the problem he said he discovered was that the child spent more than 110,000 yuan on a live voice dating app. So, how did the child register an account without telling his parents and top it up and tip so much money?

It turned out that Xiaoya used her father's mobile phone number to register multiple accounts on the live voice dating app. After that, she conducted live broadcasts as a voice anchor many times, and frequently recharged and rewarded on the platform.

Zhu Xiaojin, judge of the First Comprehensive Trial Division of the Guangzhou Internet Court: Two of them used his father’s ID and performed face recognition, while the other accounts did not undergo real-name authentication. From November 2023 to March 2024, a total of more than 110,000 were recharged to accounts on the defendant’s platform.

Because Xiaoya knew her parents' payment password and secretly deleted the balance change text messages on her parents' mobile phones, she bypassed the family's "supervision defense line". After discovering abnormal funds, the parents checked Xiaoya's mobile phone and found that it contained a large number of platform chat records, live broadcast screenshots, and large consumption records.

Xiaoya's parents applied for a refund from the platform, and the platform immediately froze the relevant accounts, but the recharge money was not refunded. Xiaoya's parents believed that these recharges were operated by children without their parents' knowledge and should be invalid. Therefore, they sued the two companies that jointly operate this live voice dating app to the court and requested that the other party return all the recharges, totaling more than 110,000 yuan.

The plaintiff entrusted litigation attorney: The defendant company failed to take effective measures to identify the actual anchor and rewarder as an underage girl, rather than an adult in his 50s who matched the registration information. The defendant company failed to strictly review registered accounts, allowing the plaintiff who was under 16 years old to engage in online anchor services.

In the view of the plaintiff, the defendant company’s lack of review mechanism led to the minor Xiaoya to start a live voice broadcast and also make large rewards. The platform should refund the full amount. But the defendant did not accept this.

The defendant argued that the real-name authentication of the account involved in the case was that of an adult, the live broadcast voice was that of an adult male, and the live broadcast speaking skills were not consistent with the status of a minor, so Xiaoya was not the actual user of the account involved in the case. They also claimed that the amount of Xiaoya’s recharge reward was more than 60,000 yuan, not the more than 110,000 yuan proposed by the plaintiff. However, the defendant company failed to provide any effective evidence for these claims.

The defendant appointed litigation attorney: We received feedback from customer service about minors recharging, and then we retrieved the live broadcast records in the background and found out that the live broadcaster was an adult male, so we rejected his application for a refund for minors’ recharges.

Is top-up and tipping done by children or by parents?

Parents said that the platform should refund the full amount of their children who used their identities to register online live broadcast accounts and rewarded them with large sums of money. However, the platform said that the actual user of the account was not the child and they did not need to refund the money. So, is the recharge and reward done by the children or the parents?

Focus 1: Is the recharge reward done by Xiaoya, or is it done by parents?

Zhu Xiaojin, Judge of the First Comprehensive Trial Division of the Guangzhou Internet Court: We saw that her recharging time was mainly concentrated in the evenings and evenings after school, and during the winter vacation. These times are consistent with the plaintiff's work and rest time as a primary school student. In addition, from the perspective of the recharge amount and frequency, we show a small amount and high frequency, but the total amount is huge in a short period of time. This is also consistent with the consumption characteristics of minors' impulsive consumption. Combined with the fact that there are indeed a large number of chat records on the platform in the plaintiff’s mobile phone, including screenshots of live broadcasts, we infer that this recharge behavior was carried out by the plaintiff, which is highly probable.

The judge said that the recharge time, amount, frequency, etc. of the account involved in the case were more in line with the irrational consumption characteristics of minors. At the same time, although the platform claimed that "the live broadcast was the voice of an adult male," it failed to provide relevant evidence on the grounds that "the live broadcast video exceeded the 180-day storage period," so the court did not accept it. The court found that the recharging behavior involved in the case was carried out by Xiaoya, a minor.

Focus 2: Is it more than 60,000 yuan or more than 110,000 yuan? How to determine the amount involved?

During the trial, the plaintiff submitted WeChat payment order records of more than 110,000 yuan, which clearly showed that between November 2023 and March 2024, Xiaoya recharged a total of more than 110,000 yuan to the platform through the WeChat account in her parents’ name. Afterwards, the account involved in the case was frozen by the platform, and the plaintiff was unable to log in to the account to further check the specific whereabouts of the money. Although the defendant had objections to the recharge amount claimed by the plaintiff, believing that the amount was more than 60,000 yuan, they failed to submit any evidence to refute it. Therefore, the court determined that the recharge amount was more than 110,000 yuan.

Zhu Xiaojin, Judge of the First Comprehensive Trial Division of the Guangzhou Internet Court: The defendant actually argued that the plaintiff may have engaged in recharge behavior, that is, whether the money would flow to other people's accounts. As a platform party, the defendant could check the direction of these recharge amounts based on the transaction orders of the plaintiff's WeChat account, but it has not provided it to the court. In court, the court also ordered it to provide it. As of before the judgment was made, the defendant still had not provided it, so we accepted the plaintiff's claim.

Focus 3: If a child tops up as a reward, can the money be refunded? How much to refund?

The judge said that this needs to be determined comprehensively based on the degree of fault of both the original and the defendant. In this case, the defendant company made two mistakes during its operations. First of all, the platform failed to fulfill its obligation to verify the true identity of the anchor. The platform involved in the case is mainly engaged in live voice broadcast services. According to Article 9 of the "Measures for the Management of Online Performance Business Activities", such platforms should use effective methods such as interviews and recorded video calls to verify the identity of the anchors. In this case, the real-name authenticator of the account involved was an adult man, but the actual operator was an underage girl, who had conducted dozens of live voice broadcasts. There were obvious differences in the voice characteristics of the two, but the platform failed to recognize it.

Secondly, the platform failed to strictly implement its legal obligations to protect minors. According to Article 76 of the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Minors", online live broadcast service providers are not allowed to provide online live broadcast publisher account registration services for minors under the age of 16. In this case, Xiaoya registered multiple accounts, some of which pretended to be adults to register for broadcasting, and some accounts did not have real-name authentication, but they were still able to start broadcasting and settle profits. In other words, the defendant company violated the mandatory provisions of the law by allowing minors to register live broadcast accounts and make top-up purchases, which was a major fault.

Zhu Xiaojin, judge of the First Comprehensive Trial Division of the Guangzhou Internet Court: Judging from the background records provided by the defendant, several accounts did not undergo real-name authentication, so it is not clear whether there is an adult or a minor behind them, but settlement was generated, which is the function of settling live broadcast income. So here we presume that these accounts have also activated the anchor function. We believe that the defendant also violated the mandatory legal obligation of the Minors Protection Act, and there is a major fault here.

At the same time, the judge pointed out that Xiaoya’s guardian also neglected the custody of identity documents, payment accounts, and daily education and guidance. They did not detect their children's large purchases in time and assisted in completing face recognition verification. They were also at fault for the damage.

In the end, after comprehensively considering the degree of fault and losses of both parties, the court decided that the platform should bear the refund liability at a ratio of 85% and refunded more than 90,000 yuan to Xiaoya. After the first-instance verdict was announced, the defendant company was dissatisfied and appealed to the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court. The second-instance court upheld the original verdict. Experts said that this case exposed the problem of "formal compliance" in the protection of minors on some online platforms. Real-name authentication is only the first step in the protection of minors. Completing real-name authentication does not mean that the platform has fulfilled its protection obligations. Platforms should improve technical means in various aspects such as account registration, content review, recharge and consumption, etc., to proactively identify and prevent minors from using adult identities to register accounts, launch broadcasts, and reward large amounts.

Li Xiaxu, a lecturer at the School of Civil and Commercial Economics at China University of Political Science and Law: The protection of minors is a legal obligation throughout the entire network service cycle. The platform cannot just set up a hurdle in the registration process and be exempt from liability, but should implement a dynamic verification at several subsequent nodes.

Experts believe that in the digital age, parents' guardianship obligations have extended from real life to the online virtual space. Parents should not only guide their children to surf the Internet scientifically and consume rationally, but also properly keep important information such as identity documents and payment passwords, and develop the habit of regularly checking account balances to promptly detect their children's large recharges, transfers and other behaviors.