The lawyer who sued Pinduoduo won the case.

Yesterday, Shanghai Changning Court held a public trial on the online infringement liability dispute case between Liu Moumou and Shanghai Xunmeng Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Pinduoduo). The court found that Pinduoduo constituted an infringement of the right to know, and the first instance ruled that Pinduoduo Compensate the loss of 400 yuan to Lawyer Liu. After a year of long tug-of-war, the lawsuit triggered by "One Knife" finally came to an end.

#01

Last year, lawyer Liu Yuhang participated in the “Bargain and Get Free” activity on Pinduoduo. Following the platform’s instructions, he first received a “Super Free Card”. Then I picked a mobile phone and prepared to bargain.

The page displays information such as "If you are the first in bargaining progress, you will be the first to be chopped", "You are most lucky" and other information. Like many users who are new to Pinduoduo bargaining, Liu Yuhang also I thought I was really one of the lucky ones, so I decided to keep cutting, made friends everywhere, and even bought a bargain card for 9.9 yuan.

Although he kept getting reminders that "you are the first in bargaining progress", Liu Yuhang was always 0.9 shy of getting the progress bar to reach 100. After that, he invited many friends to help negotiate the price, and he cut the price again and again, but the 0.9 remained unchanged.

Picture Pinduoduo’s “good luck hint”

After changing several accounts, Liu Yuhang found that the number was the same every time. In the constant cycle of "inviting friends to chop a knife", the free mobile phone becomes a carrot hanging in front of the donkey's eyes, and the final substantive step is always unable to be achieved. After suspecting that there was something fishy about the platform's data, lawyer Liu Yuhang sued Pinduoduo in court on the grounds that it violated the principle of good faith and used false data concealment rules when providing network services, which constituted fraud.

Liu Yuhang’s request is that Pinduoduo disclose the true information and data of its activities, refund the 9.9 yuan he spent on the “bargain card”, and compensate himself for 400 yuan in economic losses and 1,000 yuan in reasonable expenses.

Through the disclosed court trial details, users also learned about the "hidden" rules about "a chop". In court, Pinduoduo explained that the 0.9 displayed on the bargaining page was actually 0.9996427. Since the percentage displayed on the page had limited digits, they omitted a percentage with at least 6 digits after the decimal point and displayed it as 0.9.

The real percentage is hidden due to the "limited number of digits displayed on the page", which essentially forms a black box in the undisplayed portion, making it difficult for users to control the true progress of the activity. In other words, even if the progress bar reaches 99.9, the unfinished part can still be divided by the platform into 1 million "unit operations" to induce users.

#02

According to Article 8 of the "Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Law" and Article 17 of the "E-Commerce Law", e-commerce operators should protect consumers' right to know. , "comprehensive, true, accurate and timely" disclosure of relevant information during activities. In this case, Pinduoduo hid the data to six decimal places on the display page, causing certain disclosure flaws. Although Pinduoduo defends itself by saying that consumers can verify the displayed percentage with the information disclosed on other pages, it is difficult for ordinary consumers to discover and understand the difference in this percentage on their own in the context of bargaining.

This results in consumers spending a certain amount of time, energy, connections, traffic, etc. Although these losses do not constitute tangible damage to the user's existing property, judging from the content of the losses, they also have property attributes and should be protected.

Based on this fact, the court determined that Pinduoduo had "informed infringement", which was somewhat different from the "fraud" Liu Yuhang originally sued.

During the trial of the case, Liu Yuhang once said that the fraud he claimed was that during the process of participating in mobile phone bargaining activities, Pinduoduo pushed six pieces of fraudulent information to him and concealed the true bargaining design rules, which led him to "get it for free" They misunderstood the success rate and spent 9.9 yuan to purchase an acceleration gift package.

The court held that the existing evidence was insufficient to prove that Pinduoduo pushed "fraudulent information" and that purchasing gift packages was only an option for participating in bargaining activities, not a requirement. The most important thing is that after verification, the acceleration gift package purchased by Liu Yuhang did have a slight effect, helping him cut off 0.03 yuan. The effect is basically consistent with the description of "can be worth up to 3-8 people to cut off".

Before Liu Yuhang, there were countless bloggers and anchors on the Internet who also tried to conquer Pinduoduo’s city wall, trying to score the last 0.01 by relying on the power of the masses, but they all failed.

In March this year, Douyu anchor Xiao Jie posted the QR code of Pinduoduo’s “Cut a Knife” in the live broadcast room, inviting netizens to win a free card worth 10,000 yuan. At that time, there were up to 60,000 people online in the live broadcast room. As a result, the system directly recognized that it was malicious fraud and stopped the activity.

Later, Xiaojie organized a live broadcast in the QQ group to organize fans to send out invitations to help. Two hours later, he still only had "full of blessings." As the "60,000 people did not cut off a mobile phone" incident fermented on the Internet, Pinduoduo responded, saying that "60,000" is the number of people online in the live broadcast, not the number of people participating in bargaining, and Xiao Jie has successfully cut off the mobile phone. The mobile phone coupon has been sent to Xiaojie's account that night.

Last year, Weibo celebrity Lan Xi organized 500 WeChat friends to participate in the "Cash Wheel". After 500 opportunities, they still fell on the last dime. On Station B, there are many UP owners who have organized hundreds of people to fight Duoduo to "cut a knife", and there are few successful cases.

#03

In 2019, Pinduoduo’s GMV exceeded one trillion, becoming the third e-commerce platform in China to break the one trillion mark. It took Alibaba 14 years, JD.com 19 years, and Pinduoduo less than 5 years to achieve this result. During this period, relying on WeChat’s traffic dividends and its own “group-building” social e-commerce attributes, Pinduoduo has grown at an astounding rate. At the end of 2020, Pinduoduo’s user base reached 788 million, surpassing Taobao for the first time to become the e-commerce platform with the largest user base in China.

In the past period of time, the industry has always regarded Pinduoduo’s troika to achieve rapid user growth, including advertising and mobile phone pre-installation. As Pinduoduo’s exclusive feature, “cutting” has paved the way for this rapid growth. The rising e-commerce giants have made great contributions.

But now this “knife” does not seem to be so easy to use. According to media reports, in the first half of 2021, the “Cut with a Knife” project was rated as the lowest in Pinduoduo’s internal performance ratings. In other words, "cutting off one knife" has lost its appeal to users.

Recently, Pinduoduo launched its web version. The interface is clean and tidy, and there are no marketing activities related to "cutting a knife" at all.

On the one hand, after the number of users exceeded 800 million, Pinduoduo’s installation rate is only one step away from peaking. On the other hand, due to the "one-cut" mechanism, some people did not receive free goods or cash after using social resources, and thus became resentful. This sentiment has gradually accumulated as the number of Pinduoduo users has increased, making today's "cutting a knife" a ridiculing term on the Internet. Some netizens even appealed: "Chinese people will not kill Chinese people."

This may also explain why a case with a target price of only 9.9 yuan has attracted so much attention. After more than a year and five court sessions, Pinduoduo lost the case in the first instance. Although the compensation amount of 400 yuan is insignificant to Pinduoduo, it is extremely insulting. Lawyer Liu Yuhang’s victory is more symbolic in protecting users’ right to know in platform marketing activities.

Liu Yuhang said on Douyin that the most uncomfortable thing Pinduoduofang said in court was: Because you are a highly educated lawyer, you will not be deceived by this information.

The implication is that those who have not received higher education seem to deserve to be deceived.

Yesterday, after the Shanghai Changning District Court pronounced its verdict, Liu Yuhang posted on Weibo: "It is not easy to completely change a marketing activity model involving hundreds of millions of people. It cannot be done overnight. It requires Step by step. One person’s thinking is limited, and complete change requires collective efforts.”

This passage is like a knife on Pinduoduo.

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