PR firms raided over manipulation of online postings

In a joint crackdown with 10 other provinces, the Beijing police have investigated six PR companies that charged money to delete negative Internet postings and news for clients.

According to a Xinhua News Agency report, one of the six companies, Beijing-based Koubei, has been providing this service since 2007. The company supplied brand maintenance and public opinion monitoring services for over 50 enterprises on media sites and forums.

When Koubei detects there is negative information on the Internet about a client, it would inform the client and negotiate the price the client should pay, usually from a few hundred yuan up to 3,000 yuan ($492.6), Xinhua reported.

Then, Koubei would contact websites or forums and ask editors it knew to delete the posting by paying them some money. If the website editors are unknown to them, Koubei would ask intermediary agents to contact these websites or forums. All the business is done on QQ chat groups and other social media.

An engineer, surnamed Zhao, who works for news site easyday.com, told The Beijing News that deleting news postings is not a technical difficulty for him. He had deleted many postings for 200 yuan each for an intermediary agent, who worked closely with Koubei. In two years, he had profited more than 30,000 yuan.

Wang Guojun, a Beijing-based lawyer, told the Global Times that these companies that offer post-deletion services are taking advantage of a gray area in the law. Currently there is no clear law on whether it is legal to operate such businesses. However, he urges clients to deal with these cases according to law.

"If the negative information is fake, the clients, whose right of reputation is infringed, can ask the websites or forums to directly delete them. If the websites refuse, then the clients can sue," Wang said.

A likely situation is that companies like Koubei cooperated with websites and forums to work on negative news, then asked clients for money, he said. In that case, these companies should be charged with damage of reputation.

As early as 2009, there were reports of companies that profit from deleting negative posts. But there are still no regulations on which government branch should supervise such companies.