Rights Defense Network Analysis of New Policies and Regulations: CAC to Launch the “Clear and Bright: Campaign to Crack Down on Online Rumors About Science and Health” — Curbing Rumors Without Collateral Damage: How Can Health Governance Fall Into the Lazy Logic of “Better to Err on the Side of the Left Than the Right”

Special Commentator: Zhang Haoran

On November 6, 2026, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a notice announcing a two-month nationwide “Clear and Bright: Campaign to Crack Down on Online Rumors About Science and Health.” The campaign focuses on online disorder in the fields of science and health, targeting four prominent problems: fabricating and spreading false health information, impersonating professionals to publish pseudoscientific content, using AI technology to create and spread health rumors, and fabricating recovery cases, exaggerating treatment effects, and inducing consumption. Cyberspace authorities will strictly handle accounts that violate the rules, rigorously verify the credentials of medical science communication accounts, urge platforms to strengthen identification of deep-synthesis content, improve rumor-handling mechanisms, disclose typical cases when appropriate, reinforce platforms’ primary responsibility, effectively safeguard the public’s health rights and interests, and create a clean online environment.

(For details, see: https://www.cac.gov.cn/2026-11/06/c_1795719652932799.htm )

Analysis: Curbing Rumors Without Collateral Damage: How Can Health Governance Fall Into the Lazy Logic of “Better to Err on the Side of the Left Than the Right”?

On November 6, the CAC’s “Clear and Bright: Campaign to Crack Down on Online Rumors About Science and Health” officially began. Targeting four major forms of online disorder—packaging fake miracle drugs, falsifying identities, spreading rumors with AI, and deceptive sales—it directly addresses the public’s pressing concerns about frequent fraud and rumors misleading people in the health field. Its purpose is legitimate and its aim precise; it is, in principle, a sound policy that responds to public sentiment.

However, the experience of previous online governance campaigns has long shown that the difficulty of sound policy lies in its implementation at the end of the chain. When top-down pressure to carry out a campaign reaches platforms, it can easily be distorted into a crude purge that puts “avoiding risk first.” Some platforms have long followed a survival philosophy of “better to err on the side of the left than the right, and better to be strict than to let anything slip”: compared with spending resources to identify rumor-mongers one by one, indiscriminately banning content, throttling accounts, and widening the scope of enforcement is the lowest-cost, lowest-risk “shortcut to avoiding liability.”

As a result, after each special campaign, malicious rumor-mongers often return under new identities, while large numbers of ordinary accounts that create content in good faith and ordinary internet users sharing their life experiences become the first “casualties” of governance. Posts are deleted without warning, there is no way to appeal, and traffic is throttled without explanation. Under increasingly stringent reviews, the entire field of health content becomes a place where everyone is on edge and afraid to act. This chilling effect erodes the vitality of the content ecosystem for far longer than the rumors themselves.

Even more concerning is the pressure on the right to express oneself caused by blurred boundaries of discourse. Health discourse has never belonged exclusively to those with professional credentials, nor should it become a forbidden zone that only credentialed people may enter. Impersonating a doctor to sell fake medicine and touting a cure-all to reap profits are scourges that must be eradicated. But recovery stories based on ordinary people’s own experiences, folk remedies passed around in communities, and noncommercial reflections on everyday health care are all organic parts of the public health knowledge ecosystem. For thousands of years, much practical health wisdom has originated among ordinary people and been tested in daily life; it has by no means all come from professional texts handed down from ivory towers. If everything published by someone without professional credentials is lumped into the category of “pseudoscience,” and all unofficial expressions about health are treated as suspect rumors, that is essentially a form of discursive hegemony. It violates the objective laws governing the spread of health knowledge and deprives citizens of the basic right to exchange life experiences independently.

From the perspective of protecting rights, governance in the style of “better to kill the innocent than let the guilty go free” ultimately harms all internet users’ right to access information and freedom of expression. When people are afraid that sharing experiences will be labeled false advertising, that discussing folk remedies will be deemed illegal medical practice, or even that talking about their own treatment experiences will result in throttled traffic, the public ultimately loses more than a few pieces of information of varying quality: it also loses the possibility of drawing on diverse sources and the warmth of mutual aid among ordinary people. When only one “correct” voice remains in the health field, the result may look clean and orderly, but in reality it is another form of information blockage, running counter to the goal of improving health literacy among the whole population.

Effective governance has never used “strictness” as its measure; its core is precision. Cracking down on health rumors calls for the force of a thunderbolt, but also for proportionality that neither wrongly punishes nor lets offenders off. Regulators should further refine standards for exercising discretion and clearly define the boundary between “profiting from fabrications” and “sharing experience.” Platforms should abandon the lazy approach of “putting liability avoidance first,” establish precise screening mechanisms, and provide accessible channels for appeals and corrections, so that malicious actors have nowhere to hide and innocent people are not caught in the crossfire.

The words “clear and bright” have never meant the dead silence of a world where no one dares speak; they mean an orderly space where clear and muddied waters are distinguished. In eliminating the harms of rumors, room for expression must also be preserved; in protecting the public’s right to health, the bounds of citizens’ expression must also be respected. Only precise measures and a proper balance between restraint and flexibility can ensure that sound policy truly reaches the people, rather than being distorted as implementation is ratcheted up at every level.