S3 Group Assignment-
Witch-hunts in the Algorithm: When a Simple Question Triggers a Cyberbullying Storm
Date: 16th Jan.2026.
Project type: Video&Text Story
Name: Jiaxin LV
Student Number & Class Number: 2341796, 11
Location: Beijing
The sea breeze in Sanya may have long since carried away the physical traces of the young boy, but the pain left behind by Liu Xuezhou seems to have permanently scarred the fabric of the internet.
When the 15-year-old wrote in his final letter, “Light I came, clean I go,” he was facing thousands of malicious messages from strangers. It was widely hoped that the loss of such a vibrant life would serve as a wake-up call for cyberspace. However, in the time since the Liu Xuezhou tragedy, we find ourselves facing a grim reality: the waves of cyberbullying have not subsided. Instead, driven by invisible forces, they have become fiercer and more unpredictable.
In this war without smoke, we attempt to dismantle this vast and cold “witch-hunting mechanism” through the perspectives of three individuals: an ordinary female victim, a legal scholar who has personally experienced online abuse, and an algorithm expert familiar with platform rules.
I.The Randomization of Malice
“I don’t even know what I did wrong; I just thought it was a pity,” says Xiao Qiao (pseudonym).
Living in Xiamen, Xiao Qiao is neither an internet celebrity nor an opinion leader; she is an ordinary professional. Yet, she is now terrified to open her social media notifications. Her nightmare began with a casual scroll a few days ago. She saw a video of a merchant packing a shipment where, to prevent damage, the seller used brand-new sanitary pads to cushion the corners of the box. Out of instinctive regret for the materials, she commented six words: “Isn’t this a waste?”.
Those simple words detonated an incomprehensible explosion of malice.
That night, her phone vibrated incessantly. What started as rebuttals quickly escalated into insults and personal attacks. Comments like “Stop acting like a saint,” “They spent their own money, none of your business,” and derogatory slang rained down on her like bullets. Some users even clicked into her profile to attack her appearance and personal life.
“The scariest part wasn’t the disagreement, but the overwhelming malice, as if I had committed an unpardonable crime,” Xiao Qiao told reporters. The incident has left her with mild depression and a physical nausea triggered by phone notification sounds.
II.Cyberbullying Is Becoming Increasingly Frequent
Xiao Qiao’s experience is not an isolated case. According to a China Youth Daily survey, among young people, as many as 65.3% of respondents said they had personally experienced or witnessed cyberbullying among friends around them.
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Incidence of Cyberbullying Encountered by Youth Groups
Our investigation also shows that younger groups have a more sensitive and clearer perception of cyberbullying. We conducted a related survey based on Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book). In an “Anti-Cyberbullying Mutual Aid” group with 470 members, 80% were young people aged 18 to 32. In the “Initium Media” survey covering all age groups, the proportion of respondents who experienced cyberbullying was higher among those aged 26 to 35, with 512 people, accounting for 64.4% of the 795 victims. Among respondents aged 18 to 25, 283 people had experienced cyberbullying, accounting for 35.6% of victims.
This set of data directly refutes the wishful thinking that “cyberbullying is an isolated case”—in the current algorithmic environment, the vast majority of young people, due to their high-frequency use of social networks, are all exposed within the range of cyberbullying risks.
Cyberbullying has never been simply a few insults—62.8% of victims have suffered direct verbal attacks, 48.7% of victims face the risk of having their privacy exposed, 47.8% have had private conversations taken out of context and made public, and 37.9% are deeply troubled by false rumors. Cyberbullying is not just “cursing at people,” but a combination punch that includes invasion of privacy and reputation destruction.
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Diverse Manifestations of Cyberbullying
What deserves vigilance is long-term systematic cyberbullying. Although 62.1% of cyberbullying is “gust-like”—coming quickly and leaving quickly—19.9% of victims face continuous attacks for 2-4 weeks, 11.2% must endure harassment for 1-12 months, and 6.8% suffer cyberbullying for more than a year. This “long-term” harm is often overlooked by the public, but it causes the most severe psychological damage to victims and can easily lead to “social death.”
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Distribution of Cyberbullying Episode Duration
III.In the Age of Algorithms, The Cost of Being Seen
Chu Yin, a prominent debater and legal scholar who provided expert opinion on the Liu Xuezhou case, offers a deeper insight.
Despite having millions of followers, Chu himself has been trapped in the vortex of cyberbullying. “In this era, do not think you are far removed from cyber violence,” Chu warned. “The tragedy of Liu Xuezhou was that he was a ‘perfect victim’ archetype at the center of public opinion. But the current trend is that cyberbullying is becoming ‘civilianized’ and ‘randomize’”.
Chu points out that in the algorithmic age, everyone is vulnerable. As Xiao Qiao’s case proves, one does not need to do anything wrong or even take a strong stance. A simple, common-sense question about “thrift,” once captured by the system and thrown into a specific emotional pool, can drag anyone into the center of the colosseum to be torn apart.
“Algorithms have eliminated the rational bystander,” Chu observed. “It turns everyone into a bloodthirsty gladiator”.
IV.Complicity in Traffic: Malice Amplified by Code
Why does a phrase as simple as “Isn’t it a waste?” incite such hatred?
Zhang Tao (pseudonym), a former employee of top internet giants like ByteDance and now an expert in new media algorithms, revealed the “black box” logic behind the platforms.
“In the eyes of the algorithm, there is no moral distinction between ‘waste’ and ‘thrift,’ only data,” Zhang stated bluntly. He analyzed Xiao Qiao’s case: sanitary pads are a high-sensitivity, high-traffic keyword on the Chinese internet, often accompanied by gender issues and emotional controversy.
“When Xiao Qiao posted that comment, the system identified a potential controversy point,” Zhang explained. Instead of trying to quell the dispute, the system may have pinned the comment or precisely pushed it to user groups easily provoked by such remarks.
Zhang noted that content inducing anger, opposition, and emotional venting naturally generates higher interaction rates than rational discourse. “If you curse at someone, it will likely attract rebuttals or more curses. To the algorithm, this is high-quality, high-heat content”.
This creates a terrifying vicious cycle: algorithmic mechanisms unconsciously expand and propagate cyberbullying. To maintain user time-spent, platforms tacitly permit or even encourage extreme speech environments. Xiao Qiao became a sacrifice to this mechanism; her pain was converted into the platform’s beautiful Daily Active User (DAU) data.
“We have been calling for algorithmic adjustments, but it is difficult,” Zhang sighed. “Current models are designed by tens of thousands of engineers for ‘stickiness.’ They automatically feed users information that stimulates adrenaline—which is often conflict and violence”.
V.Breaking the Cycle: Regulation vs. Capital
If the algorithm is the gun, who is pulling the trigger?
“If we rely solely on platforms to police themselves for the sake of commercial interests, it is essentially a fantasy,” said Zhang, his tone hardening. “The underlying logic of algorithms serves capital growth. As long as traffic can be monetized and data is growing, platforms lack the fundamental motivation to curb this ‘blood-stained traffic’”.
During the interview, Zhang Tao mentioned the two words "profit" and "cost" six times. Obviously, he wanted to tell us that algorithms have only one core driving force—profit.
We found Kuaishou platform's third-quarter 2025 financial report: In the third quarter of 2025, Kuaishou's total revenue was 35.554 billion yuan. The largest source of revenue was online marketing services, which reached 20.1 billion yuan in the third quarter, a year-on-year increase of 14%, accounting for nearly 60% of total revenue.
Live streaming business is the second largest revenue segment and also Kuaishou's traditional strength, with 9.6 billion yuan in revenue in the third quarter.
Online marketing and live streaming account for 83% of revenue. We must pay special attention to the fact that these two sectors are essentially attention businesses, both highly dependent on traffic in online services. To maintain this profit, to maintain this attention business, Kuaishou needs to maintain 416 million daily active users, which means keeping nearly half of Chinese internet users using Kuaishou every day. Maintaining such a huge data set obviously cannot be achieved through rationality and science, so algorithms must harvest emotional traffic.
Kuaishou’s business is growing rapidly
This explains why, despite account bans and anti-bullying statements following Liu Xuezhou’s death, similar tragedies continue to occur.Chu Yin expressed strong concern: “This is not just a moral issue, but a legal and regulatory one. When the profit-seeking nature of capital overrides human dignity and life, strong external regulation must intervene”.
In September 2023, the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued guidelines on punishing cyber violence. However, Chu believes this is just the beginning. “When someone dies, everyone mourns; once the storm passes, the algorithms continue as usual. We must require platforms to disclose algorithmic logic and establish pre-event blocking mechanisms”.
“Without regulation to curb capital, it is impossible for platforms to proactively change their algorithmic logic,” Zhang concluded.
VI.Epilogue
At the end of the interview, Xiao Qiao told reporters she had deleted her account. However, the experience of the past few days has instilled in her a deep fear of the online world.
Liu Xuezhou’s Weibo has ceased updating forever, but the gears of the algorithms are still turning. In this massive digital siege, every click, every silence, and every burst of anger from each of us is feeding that invisible beast.
The governance of cyberbullying is a game between humanity and greed, between humanity and technology. If we cannot use the reins of the law to curb the wild nature of algorithms, then in this era where traffic reigns supreme, the next victim of an unintentional remark could be you or me.
The problems stemming from cyberbullying will continue