On Oct. 6, 2026, a female customer posted complaints on multiple social media platforms about a fried skewer stall in Gao County, Yibin, in southwestern China’s Sichuan province. “Avoid XX Copper Pot Potatoes. The owner can’t take the heat,” she wrote. She had bought a 10-yuan ($1.40) fried food combo from the stall, run by a 33-year-old woman surnamed Hu, but was dissatisfied with the portion of potatoes. “She just refused to add potatoes afterward,” the customer added. Her location-tagged posts quickly spread, and negative comments about Hu and her stall flooded the comment sections.Hu responded to the criticism, writing, “I stand behind my portions.” Three days later, on Oct. 9, she jumped into a river and died by suicide.Hu had run the stall for more than four years, sleeping less than six hours a night. In her suicide note, she described the enormous pressures she faced in life. She had hoped to watch her child grow up, she wrote, but the video telling people to avoid her stall had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.She also wrote: “These past two days I have experienced what I consider cyberbullying. One person complained about no potatoes in her order, and then the comments came flooding in about bad service and poor-tasting food.”This was not the first tragedy of its kind. In August 2025, a 57-year-old obstetrician-gynecologist surnamed Shao in Zhoukou, central China’s Henan province, jumped to her death. According to her family, she had endured more than seven months of cyberbullying over a medical dispute. In 2023, after a primary school student in Wuhan, capital of the central Hubei province, was killed in a traffic accident on campus, his mother was subjected to online attacks and later jumped to her death. In cases like these, public opinion often attributes the tragedies to cyberbullying.But in Hu’s case, labeling the entire incident “cyberbullying” and placing the blame on the customer who posted the negative review would exaggerate the power of a single act of expression.The customer maintained that she was simply describing a genuine experience, with “no malice, incitement, or falsehood.” She did not insult or personally attack anyone, disclose private information, or call for coordinated attacks online or offline. Her criticism may have been harsh, subjective, or exaggerated, but based on the content of her posts alone, it is difficult to characterize it as cyberbullying.Many negative comments about the stall owner appeared beneath the posts, but there is currently no evidence that they were all malicious. Public criticism can be harsh, but legal liability must rest on provable facts.In July 2026, China released a draft Anti-Online Violence Law for public comment. It defines online violence as “concentrated or sustained” acts involving “insult and abuse, rumor-mongering and defamation, incitement of hatred,” and similar behavior. A negative review based on a genuine transaction cannot automatically be classified as cyberbullying because it has harmful consequences. Moreover, the draft has not yet become law.A common misconception is that anything posted online will inevitably spread and attract attention. That is simply not true. People publish vast amounts of content every day, but only a tiny fraction attracts widespread attention.Consider Dr. Shao’s case. Following an investigation, the platform disclosed that her account had received more than 10,900 comments, about 60 of which were suspected of containing attacks or other inappropriate content. The rest were classified as normal or neutral interactions. Although the platform’s findings should not be treated as a definitive record of every offensive interaction, they serve as a reminder that not every comment should be regarded as a malicious attack.None of this excuses genuine cyberbullying. In 2018, a female doctor surnamed An in Deyang, Sichuan, became involved in a dispute with a boy at a swimming pool. The boy’s family posted edited surveillance footage online accompanied by inflammatory text. After enduring sustained online attacks, An died by suicide. In 2021, a court sentenced three defendants to prison for criminal insult.The law is not powerless against cyberbullying. Precisely because it has the power to punish such behavior, however, we must distinguish criminal incitement and insults from harsh criticism.Tragedies often result from a combination of factors. We cannot draw a direct causal line from a single negative review and the comments that followed to a person’s suicide. The negative review was one link in a chain of events, but it was neither the sole cause nor something that made the outcome inevitable.Hu’s final message makes clear the immense pressures she faced in her personal life and as a small business owner. Her psychological state and the support available to her at the time also deserve attention.The platform’s decision to promote the post to nearby users is just how online reviews work. Positive and negative reviews must be visible to help consumers distinguish good businesses from bad ones. But regulating them presents a dilemma.Any screening system risks two types of errors: false positives, in which legitimate criticism is flagged as malicious, and false negatives, in which malicious comments go undetected. Tightening controls reduces false negatives but increases false positives, while relaxing them has the opposite effect. Platforms must therefore balance the costs of both.For platforms such as the consumer review service Dianping and the short-video app Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, determining a post’s motives is difficult, and predicting its consequences even harder. Siding with businesses risks suppressing legitimate criticism, while siding with consumers risks allowing malicious attacks. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.Anyone who has maintained a blog or public social media account knows how pervasive online negativity can be, with abusive comments and private messages a common occurrence. We cannot expect everyone to tolerate such abuse, but where should we draw the line in regulating it?Cyberbullying typically involves a series of acts including verbal abuse, defamation, and insults. Such behavior may constitute a civil infringement and, in serious cases, give rise to criminal liability. But the definition of cyberbullying must not become so broad that it exaggerates the harm caused by ordinary expression.The “clear and present danger” standard in U.S. legal history offers a useful reminder that speech should not be restricted merely because it causes discomfort. However, that standard arose in a specific legal context and cannot be directly applied as a general principle of Chinese law.If we endlessly magnify the psychological harm that speech can cause and attribute tragic outcomes solely to what people say, the argument that “speech can be harmful” risks becoming a blanket justification for restricting expression.If we blame every tragedy on the criticism that preceded it, consumers may hesitate to post negative reviews, and others may begin to self-censor. Free expression would suffer, potentially undermining market competition.Such a focus on cyberbullying also overlooks two critical issues: the pressures facing small business owners and the need for better mental health support. Long hours, unstable incomes, and the stresses of running a business can make a single bad review feel overwhelming. China’s national mental health hotline, 12356, also has an important role in identifying and responding to people in crisis.We must confront genuine cyberbullying without silencing legitimate criticism, while also addressing gaps in mental health care and support for small businesses. Blaming a single review may offer a convenient explanation for Hu’s death, but it brings us no closer to understanding the tragedy or preventing the next one.Translator: Gabriel Kwan.(Header image: Visuals from VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)
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