The video comes from YouTube.
Introduction
Recently, Olympic diving champion Quan Hongchan talked about the weight changes caused by her entering puberty and the pressure of public opinion after the Paris Olympics in an interview with the Chinese magazine Portrait. These public opinions are not only aimed at Quan Hongchan herself, but also at her family and friends. Quan Hongchan said in an interview that she had seriously considered retiring, and this remark triggered a heated discussion among netizens.
In fact, this is not the first time that there has been malice towards the athletes. In recent years, with the popularization of ‘fan culture’, the sports industry has also suffered a lot of negative effects. As public figures, they have been exposed to the spotlight for a long time, and their every move has attracted much attention, even in the network environment. Driven by the mechanism of social media platforms, these comments are easily transformed into offensive remarks, which spread rapidly while attracting more attention.
However, are the negative comments on the Internet just some netizens who are too radical? Isn’t there a deeper reason behind this?
This blog believes that hate speech on the contemporary Internet not only comes from individual users, but more importantly, the platform is amplifying the harm according to the algorithm mechanism. The platform will regard that emotional speech as content that attracts the attention of the audience more, to give priority to recommendation. This move not only promotes the spread of malicious comments but also determines the direction of online public opinion to a certain extent.Therefore, this blog will deeply explore the platform’s fueling of the phenomenon of online hate speech under the operation of algorithms, governance and business models through the Quan Hongchan incident.
Section 1: What is hate speech? The harm of hate speech
Many people may find the concept of hate speech intuitively easy to understand and usually define it as a clearly offensive expression. In fact, the actual situation is far from that simple. Hateful content can attack individuals or groups because of their identity (i.e. religious, ethnicity, nationality, race, skin color, bloodline, gender and other identity factors), or communicate with them in any speech, text or behavior that uses derogatory and discriminatory speech (Flew, 2021, p.115). In other words, this is the labeling and marginalization of specific groups to a certain extent.
In real life, there may be various forms of presentation. In the example of the Gamergate controversy cited in the book Regulating Platforms, three female game developers and critics were forced to move out of their residences due to continuous attacks and harassment on the Internet (Flew, 2021, p.115). Although these remarks are not necessarily obviously offensive, they will still affect people’s judgment to a certain extent.
Invisible harm is more terrible than tangible. In recent years, we can often see the news of suicide due to cyber violence, but fifteen years ago, these were just an example. For individuals, if they are under negative influence and public opinion pressure for a long time, they will first have obvious psychological changes, such as low self-esteem, not talking, biasing in my cognition and even inability to take care of themselves. This is a typical diffusion trend.
When certain groups are repeatedly portrayed as problem groups or regarded as threats, these narratives will affect public judgment, and the anonymity of the network will amplify the evil in human nature. Some people may think that others don’t know who you are, and it seems that you don’t have to bear the consequences after making a statement, so all kinds of vicious and extreme words spread on the Internet. Perhaps most people are rational, kind and self-disciplined. Laugh at many so-called ‘melons’ on the Internet and are not keen to speak out, so the Internet has become the world of extremists.
With the changes of the times, the rules for identifying non-standard speech on the platform are constantly being renovated, and people’s expression methods are also upgrading. From the initial direct abuse to more obscure expressions, such as sarcasm, jokes and even some seemingly rational evaluations, gradually rationalize negative remarks through hints, exaggeration or amplification of certain stereotypes. This invisible expression is more difficult to judge, but it is also more harmful, so hate speech becomes complicated.
Although the harm of hate speech has been paid attention to, the definition is not clear. The algorithm of the platform needs to disassemble and analyze whether these remarks are offensive according to the specific context. This ambiguity directly leads to more loopholes in the regulatory mechanism of the platform (Matamoros-Fernández, 2017).
Section 2: How does the platform shape and amplify this phenomenon?
From the perspective of the platform, its algorithm mechanism, governance mode and business model all play an important role in this process.
· Platforms
In today’s digital media environment, the recommendation mechanism of the platform is very important for content dissemination.
Taking Quan Hongchan’s recent interview speech as an example, she admitted that what bothered her most in 2025 was her weight. With the late development of puberty, height growth, weight change, and body size change, which are the natural laws of growth and development, are misinterpreted as ‘out of control’ and ‘non-self-discipline’. This has long gone beyond the legitimate examination and supervision of public figures and evolved into an attack and slander of human dignity.
‘I think it’s a luck to win the game’, ‘I always feel that others dance better than me’, ‘I hope you don’t scold me anymore, don’t scold my family, and don’t scold my friends’. A top athlete who can conquer the world with ‘slaps disappear’ but can’t calm down the ‘slap’ of cyber violence. Kind reminders on social media are intertwined with harsh accusations, and there are many malicious remarks full of physical humiliation. For a girl who is only ten years old and her mind is still growing, this kind of continuous examination and judgment from hundreds of millions of strange eyes, her psychological pressure is unimaginable for ordinary people. When her body details become hotter than technical movements, the sportsmanship itself has been alienated.
People only see the negative content in front of the screen but ignore the operating mechanism of the platform after these contents. Social media companies need users’ participation, discussion, clicks and many opinions. Therefore, compared with the neutral display of information, most platforms are more inclined to give priority to those content that can trigger user interaction, and the reference basis is like, comment and forward. It is because of this mechanism that some controversial or offensive content is often more visible than rational expressions.
· Governance
In addition to algorithms, the governance model of the platform is also very important. For hate speech content, each digital platform has very different rules – content with obvious offensive words or discriminatory words may be deleted, and publishers may be banned or even blocked.
However, the reality is that there is no clear standard for the definition of hate speech. As we mentioned in the introduction, hate speech itself has a certain degree of ambiguity and needs to be judged based on different contexts and personal subjective understanding (Matamoros-Fernández, 2017). As the identity of the users participating in the discussion, the public needs to understand these contents carefully, not to mention the audit mechanism of the platform. Therefore, the platform will face many challenges in actual implementation.
The online public opinion that Quan Hongchan is experiencing is closely related to the popular “fan culture”. The public, especially some netizens, use an almost strict body size standard for entertainment idols to look at this athlete who is in a critical period of hard training and growth. Quan Hongchan’s efforts and efforts are largely obscured by superficial labels.
One of the powers of the platform is the decision-making power. They can decide what content is deleted and what content is displayed. However, these negative contents cannot be completely deleted, and there are always loopholes in the regulatory mechanism, which also allows some offensive comments to be retained and then continued to spread under the platform algorithm mechanism. It is also in the process of selection and screening that the trend of online public opinion is constantly shaped (Sinpeng et al., 2021).
This makes many social media now more like weapons, not platforms for freely sharing views. Although the platform has been trying its best to control and manage, instability has always existed, which is a challenge that digital platforms must face.
· Business Model
In addition to algorithms and governance models, we also need to understand the underlying business logic of platform operation. The digital platform itself has become an important business model. The platform and its related enterprises have become a key force in building open networks and promoting the large-scale participation and interaction of a growing global population. These platforms not only involve different industries but also have different business models and network effects. These elements together constitute the core mechanism for enterprises to accumulate capital and make profits (Flew, 2021).
The operation of most social media platforms depends on users’ stay time and interaction data, such as clicks. The longer the user stays on the page, the platform will regard it as a high degree of participation, so the greater the economic benefits will be. So, what kind of content is more attractive? This not only requires publishers to show more ideas, but the platform is also trying to select more valuable content from the contributions. Among them, controversial, emotional and easy to provoke discussion will be given priority, just because these contents can be ‘eye-catching’ (Matamoros-Fernández, 2017).
Under such a mechanism, the spread of hate speech is not entirely accidental. Although the platform itself may not actively encourage this kind of content, based on the interaction and traffic-oriented business logic, the platform indirectly becomes the ‘hand behind’ the promotion of these contents.
Conclusion
Hate speech and cyber violence seen by the public are not only individual phenomena caused by individuals to vent their emotions but also influenced by the operation of the platform. From the obvious algorithmic mechanism, data statistics to the core platform governance, to the business operation logic behind it, this is not a simple act of cyber violence. What is more difficult to find is the imbalance of social structure. As the ‘upper’ with absolute power, the platform did not implement everything as written in the regulations and norms that users saw when they first joined the platform. On the surface, the platform has indeed fulfilled most of its promises, but as far as the phenomenon of online violence is concerned, the platform is constantly amplifying these focuses.
Therefore, the management mode of the platform still needs to be improved. The platform always puts itself in a neutral position, but it continues to influence the direction of public discussion in the process of information screening, content display and rule implementation. In this case, the generation and dissemination of hate speech is the result of the joint role of individual and platform mechanisms.
It is almost impossible to eradicate this problem completely. If the platform increases the regulation of content, such as setting up more regulations to restrict users’ malicious statements, then the user’s feedback may be that they cannot express their opinions freely. This goes against the original ‘original intention’ of the Internet, which is a platform to encourage free speech. Moreover, people will have their own preferences or judgments on many things and will involuntarily reject views that oppose their own value orientation. The platform can create a better network environment by improving the mechanism. Will the public’s thinking be easily changed? This is a question worth pondering.
Perhaps, rather than finding a ‘complete solution’, it is more important to constantly find a balance between the platform mechanism and individual behavior. Only in this continuous adjustment will the network environment become more ‘civilized’.
Reference List
- Flew, T. (2021). Regulating platforms. Polity Press.
- Sinpeng, A., Martin, F., Gelber, K., & Shields, K. (2021). Facebook: Regulating hate speech in the Asia Pacific. University of Sydney & University of Queensland.
- Matamoros-Fernández, A. (2017). Platformed racism: The mediation and circulation of an Australian race-based controversy on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Information, Communication & Society, 20(6), 930–946. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1293130
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