BYD Defamation Case Leads to Landmark Ruling

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Last year, BYD sued just over three dozen online influencers. In its opinion, thee 37 influencers had engaged in “repeated online attacks” and used “false or misleading information that it claims has harmed its brand image, disrupted market order, and negatively affected the wider automotive sector.” In other words, they lied about BYD and caused the company and the broader industry serious damage. That’s the claim, at least. BYD also saw the attacks as “organized” and “coordinated.” Though, they could have just been a bunch of influencers copying one or two “sources.”

One of those influencers just lost big in his court case this past week. Aside from having to publicly apologize (which he did), “Long Ge Talks EVs” had to pay BYD a 2 million yuan ($294,000) penalty. (Did the blogger have 2 million yuan in his bank account to pay such a fine?… There’s no mention of that.) Long Ge conceded in his apology video that he had made “improper remarks” about BYD’s battery, motor, and electric-control systems — and that these remarks negatively affected the company.

Libel laws seem to be quite strong in China. I don’t know how effective the case would have been in the UK, but I am quite confident it wouldn’t have gotten far in the United States, where the freedom to say what you want is given more of a cowboy-era leniency and people make all kinds of false, negative claims about companies and others. Are the verdict and punishment here fully correct, or did they go overboard in their punishment of a critical influential voice? Well, we don’t have the details. All we know going on how things turned out is that “Long Ge Talks EVs” published an apology and conceded to making “improper remarks,” a sort of vague statement.

This blogger is also facing lawsuits regarding the Seres and Aito brands. So, yeah, he did have a history of slamming EV producers in a way that they argue was false and harmful. I would love to see more of an explanation — perhaps documentary style — of who this guy is, how he got so into bashing EV brands in China, and what things he thought were true, knew weren’t true, or still thinks are true. Hmm… I don’t think we’re going to get that. He’s probably going to be very careful about what he says publicly now.

“BYD brand and public relations general manager Li Yunfei said on social media in earlier comments that the company accepted objective criticism and factual reporting, but would continue using legal measures against what he described as fabricated or defamatory online content,” CarNewsChina writes.

Well, I am sure of one thing: I’d be super careful that what I was saying in China was correct and verifiable if I was going to go criticize BYD and claim that it had technical/mechanical problems. That said, shouldn’t that be how it is anyway? Should people be slamming brands and fearmongering around them if they don’t really know if a problem is real or not?