① Douyin issued a financial industry convention, proposing systematic regulations on the creation of financial content in terms of account qualifications, content management, marketing behavior, violation handling, etc.;
② In the specific rules, account qualifications are prefixed as the core threshold.
"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" reported on December 17 that "creators in the financial field are encouraged to complete the platform's financial professional qualification certification before publishing professional financial content. Accounts that have not been certified by the platform are prohibited from publishing professional financial content and recommending professional financial services/products."
Douyin's latest "Douyin Community Financial Industry Convention (Trial)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Convention") puts forward systematic regulations on the creation of financial content in terms of account qualifications, content management, marketing behavior, violation handling, etc.
In the specific rules, account qualifications are set as the core threshold. At the same time, the Convention also stipulates clear prohibitions on false and misleading financial information, requiring that the publication of content that goes against common sense and whose authenticity is difficult to verify is strictly prohibited, and behaviors such as exaggeration, rumor-mongering, and fabrication of false information are prohibited. There are also clear restrictions on the product operation behavior of financial institutions.
Different from the previous special rectifications carried out on issues such as illegal stock recommendations and false propaganda, this time the Convention does not focus on "point governance" around a single type of violation. Instead, it attempts to build a relatively complete and predictable system of rules for the production and dissemination of financial content to reduce the possibility of the spread of risky content from the source.
However, with the release of the convention, some members of the public also raised questions: Is Douyin pursuing the management logic of "you cannot speak without qualifications"?
In response to this, Li Liang, vice president of Douyin Group, responded on the social media platform that the focus of launching this convention is to combat the behavior of explaining highly professional content such as financial markets and recommending financial products without professional qualifications. During the governance process, the platform found that some accounts published financial content by impersonating or packaging the identities of experts or employees of financial institutions, which was highly misleading and had a bad social impact. It hopes to remove such accounts from the platform through stricter qualification requirements.
Li Liang also emphasized that the platform encourages creators who are truly engaged in in-depth and professional content sharing to complete qualification certification in advance to enhance user trust; while ordinary users are not restricted in sharing objective and compliant financial experience based on their own experience.
"Having qualifications does not mean you can say anything casually," Li Liang said. In recent years, the platform has established separate community standards for content categories with high professional thresholds and high social impact, such as medical and health, law, and finance, and has also built specialized content review capabilities and introduced reviewers with professional backgrounds to improve the rigor of content control. The ultimate goal is still to provide users with more professional and higher-quality information content.
From a larger regulatory background, the introduction of this convention is also closely related to the recent continuous strengthening of the cyberspace department’s governance of financial content.
On November 26, the Cyberspace Administration of China held a meeting to summarize and exchange experiences on optimizing the business network environment in Beijing. The meeting required that website platforms should adhere to a problem-oriented approach, strictly implement subject responsibilities, improve the ability to discover and handle information that is obviously corporate-related infringements, strengthen the account management of financial "self-media" and MCN institutions, and continuously improve the accuracy of handling illegal information and accounts. It is necessary to improve the level of standardization, optimize the mechanism for accepting and handling reports, standardize the work process for accepting and handling enterprise-related online infringement information, and refine the standards for handling enterprise-related infringement accounts. To improve governance efficiency, cybersecurity and informatization departments must have the courage to take on their responsibilities, actively explore and innovate, polish the brand of the special action "Optimizing the Business Network Environment", and summarize and promote a batch of replicable good experiences and practices.
In addition, regulatory authorities such as the State Administration of Financial Supervision, the Ministry of Public Security, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission have also continued to crack down on illegal online financial activities for a long time. During the "March 15" period this year, according to CCTV news reports, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, in conjunction with the public security, cyberspace and other departments, carried out a severe crackdown on the fabrication and spread of stock market rumors through the entire chain of monitoring, screening, disposal, warning, investment education, etc.
In September this year, the State Administration of Financial Supervision and the Ministry of Public Security jointly released the first batch of typical cases of illegal and criminal activities involving "black and gray industries" in the financial field. They launched a heavy blow to crack down on prominent illegal and criminal activities of "black and gray industries" in the financial field and achieved positive results.
In recent years, illegal and illegal activities in the financial field, such as stock market gossip, illegal and illegal stock recommendations, and spreading rumors through essays, have occurred frequently on various online platforms. With the joint efforts of all parties including supervision and platforms, the financial content ecosystem has gradually developed towards standardization and healthy development.
In fact, before the release of the Convention, Douyin had repeatedly disclosed its progress in the governance of illegal financial content.
On October 11, 2024, Douyin issued a penalty announcement for illegal securities activities such as "illegal stock recommendation". The announcement shows that in the past month alone, the platform has dealt with more than 3,600 illegal accounts related to the stock market and more than 15,000 pieces of illegal content.
On March 10 this year, Douyin issued an announcement (II) on cracking down on “illegal stock recommendation” and other illegal securities activities, clearly encouraging qualified financial and securities professionals to publish authoritative and authentic information and share professional knowledge, while continuing to combat illegal activities such as “providing paid stock recommendation services without relevant qualifications” and “fabricating and disseminating false or misleading information to affect securities transactions.”
In October this year, Douyin issued official reminders on three typical financial scams on the platform, clarifying that the platform resolutely cracks down on all types of illegal financial activities and strictly prohibits behaviors that disrupt economic and financial management order. It also announced data that in the third quarter of 2025, the platform handled more than 100,000 pieces of illegal stock recommendation and other financial violations.
Combined with this "Convention", it can be seen that Douyin has gradually tightened the standard management of financial content, forming a "four-step" financial governance, until it completely and systematically regulates illegal financial content in detail.
In an interview with a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, Chen Duan, director of the Digital Economy Integrated Innovation and Development Center of the Central University of Finance and Economics, said that in the past period, the platform has adopted more "special rectification" methods for the governance of financial content, which is a typical reactive and campaign-style governance. It can curb illegal stock recommendations, false propaganda and other chaos in the short term, but it is more than sufficient to treat the symptoms and insufficient to address the root causes. The issuance of the "Douyin Community Financial Industry Convention" marks a systematic upgrade of platform governance ideas – from post-processing to full-chain governance that combines pre-prevention, in-process control and post-event traceability.
In Chen Duan's view, the Convention has built a basic framework for the financial content ecosystem through the three major sections of account qualifications, content management, and marketing activities, and has moved the governance focus forward to the human and behavioral level, significantly raising the cost of violations for "pseudo experts" and "fake mentors". At the same time, delineating content and marketing red lines through clear negative lists will help eliminate long-standing ambiguities in rules, stabilize the expectations of creators and users, and promote good money to drive out bad money.
"In the longer term, this type of industry convention is expected to evolve into a de facto industry reference standard, reshape the professionalism orientation of financial content production, accelerate the stratification and professionalization process of creators, and become an important interface connecting financial supervision and online content governance." Chen Duan further said, "Of course, its actual effectiveness still depends on the rigidity of execution, technical identification capabilities and the degree of cross-platform collaboration, especially in aspects such as the credibility of qualification certification and the definition of covert inducement behavior, which still need to be continuously observed and improved."
