Prices are surging and business is booming for those who specialize in deleting online posts, a banned industry in China, as enterprises hurry to polish their brands ahead of World Consumer Rights Day, which falls on Tuesday.
Companies in China often fear World Consumer Rights Day, also known as 3.15 in China, as China Central Television holds an annual gala that shames companies for misconduct.
According to a report by China National Radio (CNR) on Sunday, the price of deleting one damaging online post has climbed as high as 10,000 yuan ($1,515) in the past month, due to increasing demand from companies that wish to remove negative information from the Internet.
"Deleting a post on Baidu Knows costs 100 yuan, a post on Baidu Tieba is 150 yuan, while for posts on Tianya BBS you need to pay as much as 2,300 yuan," an anonymous representative who specializes in deleting posts told CNR.
The source said their "business" extends to removing news reports from major news outlets such as Sina.com, though the news websites' administrators must verify requests before processing them.
Another representative, who referred to himself as an "online PR" specialist, told the Global Times on Monday that the nature of a post's content determines how difficult it is to delete, and thus determines the price of the service.
Advertisements for "online PR" firms can be easily spotted on QQ, an online chat service run by Tencent, and Taobao, China's largest online shopping platform, run by e-commerce giant Alibaba.
A joint judicial interpretation released by the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate in September 2013 said that individuals who offer to delete online information for pay can be charged and convicted of conducting illegal business operations.
The State Internet Information Office launched a crackdown on "online blackmail and paid online post deletion services" in January 2015 and shut down 84 illegal websites.
