Livestreaming no excuse for life-threatening acts

In December, a male from Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning province, died after drinking a lot of liquor while livestreaming. Thepaper.cn comments:

According to a friend of his family, he drank heavily every day for three consecutive months in order to attract lots of fans. A video clip even shows he developed a nervous twitch because he drank too much.

He is not the only one of his kind. On the livestreaming platform he served, there are still many who try to attract fans by going to extremes. The more liquor they drink, the more fans they hope to get and the more money they will make.

In other words, the business model of the livestreaming platform encourages people to put their health and lives at risk.

That's illegal. According to a national regulation on online performances that came into effect in 2017, performances on the online platforms should not contain any horrific, cruel, violent or vulgar content, or any content that harms the performers' health. Obviously, drinking excessive amounts of strong liquor is against the regulation.

A similar tragedy happened in 2017, when 26-year-old Wu Yongning died while livestreaming his climb of a high building.

Some said the livestreamers who died have chosen to do so and it is their right to make profit in this risky way. The problem is, their deeds might be emulated by others who do not know how much risk is involved.

In order to curb this behavior, it is necessary to strike at the root of the problem by regulating livestreaming platforms. Only when the livestreaming platforms give up the business mode of encouraging livestreamers to attract fans via extreme challenges, will such tragedies be prevented in the future.