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Didi Sues Adult Film Fake Sexual Assault Film Creator Over Fake
Didi Chuxing, China's largest ride-hailing service, has sued a couple who shot a pornographic vidéo of a drug-and-rape driver from Didi. The company said the explicit video had tarnished its reputation and severely threatened its efforts to prevent sexual abuse and harassment by passengers.
Since last week, the scandal has been at the forefront of all Chinese social media. On Wednesday, an anonymous article was published by the Weibo user on GitHub, a global development platform that is accessible and free of censorship in China.
In the article , the author raised questions about the video uploaded to Xīngliàn literary web site, a man pretending to be a Didi driver who films hisself drugging and raping a woman after losing consciousness. The author also raises questions about this issue. The creator of the post also noted that the attack happened in real time by thousands of users on the platform.
The claims rapidly attracted public attention online and several internet users called for a thorough investigation into what appears to be a sexual assault case. On 11 June Didi (in Chinese) wrote about Weibo that she knew the charges and reported the incident to the police.
One day after, at an unexpected turn of events, the police released (in Chinese) their investigative findings in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, saying that the victim and the perpetrator in the video were indeed a couple who performed the sexual act and tried to benefit from their views. The police have said the pair were arrested on the grounds that they "violated social norms and destroyed government orders."
On 15 June Didi published a statement that he had decided to bring the couple before the court for smearing Didi's reputation as drivers by setting up a pornography association.
Didi 's CEO Chén Xigon Sil, who is the supervisor of the company, said in a Weibo article that the whole group of Didis drivers on grounds of some people who are mentally disturbed are unfair to stigmatize.
To ensure the efficiency of all the security measures we implemented, we need the cooperation of our drivers. Chen wrote that it is unfair to relate them to crimes.
The news came at a time of radical restorations of public trust in Didi following a series of high-profile scandals involving drivers of Didi who sexually assaulted passengers, murdering them following the attack.
Didi has raped and killed a female passenger in May 2018, which led to intense scrutiny by the ride-hairing giant. Three months later, due to another rape and killing of a female passenger who was on duty, Didi was again in hot water.
Following the killings, Didi has appointed two top managers to give priority to the "improvement of its customer service over its growth in income." Since then, the company has taken steps to improve security within its app, such as limiting its carpooling service to homosexual riding alone and carrying out stricter background inspections of its drivers.
