China News Network Comment: "Taking takeaways off the shelves" cannot be a script to gain traffic

China News Service, Beijing, November 11 (Zhong Xingzhen) There is no spoken dialogue, the scene is almost static, only the merchants are holding large banners with "Cancel takeout, close live broadcast", and the comment area is crowded with people taking sides and scolding each other.

According to CCTV News, recently, this type of templated videos mass-produced by multiple accounts in a short period of time has triggered discussions.

Behind the popularity of the content is a "performance" carefully planned by the MCN organization.

The video nominally appeals to brick-and-mortar merchants, but in fact, it distorts business formats such as takeout and physical stores that should complement each other into a video script that deceives netizens and incites consumer opposition.

"You can only use some means to obtain traffic. Only with public opinion can you have traffic." This "emotion is traffic" routine is a common method used by MCN organizations to turn people's livelihood issues into public opinion gimmicks to gain attention.

In operation, MCN organizations charge merchants in the name of operating agents on the one hand, and on the other hand, they use the earned exposure to sell courses or promote commercial services. As a result, merchants who chanted the slogan "Boycott takeout" continued to do takeout business. Netizens were quarreling because of the virtual statements, video playback data continued to soar, and institutions made a lot of money.

A restaurant in Yibin, Sichuan, only accepts banquets and has never offered takeout. The person in charge of the organization that operates the "Sichuan Boat Club" admitted that many of the nearly 20 physical businesses it operates on behalf of the restaurant are still doing takeout, live broadcasting, as well as home decoration, hairdressing and other non-catering industries.

MCN organizations only value traffic conversion after hype and do not consider the consequences of "performance". In this case, the platform should optimize the content review process and put the "checking" link in front.

At present, the cost of opening a new account is relatively low, and the operators themselves say that some people have used AI to imitate this template and also gained traffic. If we only rely on subsequent complaints from netizens and regular platform inspections to ban and punish videos, it will be difficult to increase the "performance" cost of MCN organizations. For videos with similar copywriting and batch releases by multiple accounts, platforms need to strengthen supervision before the relevant content is released, and reduce the phenomenon of relying on short-term abnormal traffic and profiting from it at the source.

People's livelihood issues are not the raw material for traffic, and consumers' trust cannot withstand overdrafts over and over again. The banners can be folded and the templates can be changed, but if the distribution logic of "provoking confrontation = gaining traffic" remains unchanged, the next staged issue will soon emerge. The key to governance is to make the cost of counterfeiting truly higher than the benefits. Only then will the "performance" really stop.