Just a joke

Lang and He learned the hard way to mind what you post online. The 24-year-old He told Qilu Evening News that he regretted uploading post, which was just for fun. Lang's father agreed that "it was just a joke by two young men".

According to He, his friend Lang, 27, took video of Wu waiting for delivery on July 7 and uploaded it into a WeChat group with 275 members. After seeing the video, he proposed that for fun they should try and fool the people in the group.

After opening a secondary account on WeChat pretending to be the woman in the video, He used the account to add Lang, who was pretending to be the deliveryman, to create a chat that told a tale of infidelity.

They uploaded the package of the video and WeChat screenshots to another WeChat group with 104 members and the false story quickly began to circulate widely online. Wu called the police on Aug 7. On Aug 13, police arrested the two men for "cyber libel".

Evidence collected by Wu and some others online showed that, from Aug 8 to 11, an article based on the false story was viewed more than 10,000 times on a WeChat account. Several versions circulated online which, as of Sept 20, had been viewed cumulatively more than 60,000 times and forwarded 217 times. China Daily tried to search for related posts online, but produced no search results.

Topics related to the event have trended several times on Sina Weibo. A hashtag about Wu losing her job has been viewed more than 580 million times.

Due to Wu's understandably fragile mental condition and the impact caused by the post, Wu lost her job as an assistant manager at a local company.

In September, she was diagnosed with depression after having trouble sleeping and consistently feeling anxious.

"It is the darkest period in my life. I didn't do anything wrong, but I cannot bear other people staring at me, no matter whether it is in a good or bad way," Wu says.

During the hottest day in Hangzhou's summer, she had to wear a mask. To avoid meeting people, she preferred to go outside after 10 pm. Staying with her to prevent her from hurting herself, her boyfriend was also fired by his company in August because he refused to travel, according to Wu.

Failing to see funny side of what Lang and He consider to be a joke, Wu cannot accept their explanation and is asking for compensation of about 120,000 yuan ($18,600).

Wu insists: "It is not funny at all and it is a crime, for which the two grown-ups need to take responsibility and accept punishment for what they did."

When receiving the court's acceptance letter of the high-profile case on Dec 14, she felt relieved and couldn't stop crying.

"The case will send a positive message that internet is not a lawless place," Procuratorial Daily quoted criminal law professor Fan Chongyi as saying when commenting on the case.

As of the end of June, China had more than 940 million internet users, compared with 688 million in 2016, according to the latest statistics from the China Internet Network Information Center. There are 523 million monthly active users of micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo, and more than 1 billion monthly active users of WeChat, which allows people to send text, photos, videos and voice messages over mobile phones.

"As more people embrace the internet, especially social media, bringing dramatic change to the realm of communication, it brings challenges to extend the scope of the law," Zheng says.