Social Media Accounts Deserve Dual-Track Ownership Protection

Source: Xinhua.

The ownership and trading of social accounts has become a focus of debate. Against the background of surging Chinese internet users and activity, defining who owns a social account and building a legal framework is urgent. Article 127 of the Civil Code provides that where the law has provisions on the protection of data and online virtual property, those provisions apply. But while the Civil Code confirms protection in principle, the absence of dedicated legislation means there is still no unified, systematic judicial standard for social media accounts. It is necessary to innovate the underlying theory of accounts as virtual property and build, at the legislative level, a system of rights regulation, remedies and protection.

Article 127, inherited from the General Provisions of Civil Law, was the first general, guiding provision on data and virtual property, pointing the way for later special legislation. Unfortunately it remains a referential clause: the scope of such property, the determination of ownership and protective measures are almost entirely blank, expressing an attitude of legal protection without concrete guidance for judicial practice.

Although social accounts exist in a virtual world, their interaction with the real world creates enormous economic value, and new realities demand updated legal concepts. The author’s view is that ownership of social accounts should be dual-track: users hold ownership of the account, operators hold intellectual property, the two independent yet complementary.

Users own their accounts. When a user registers an account and keeps using it, publishing content, attracting followers and building influence, the user contributes sustained intellectual and labour input that gives the account substantial exchange value. Take accounts on Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu or Douyin, ranked by traffic, followers and reputation: a single promotional post by a top influencer can generate hundreds of thousands to millions of views in advertising effect, and the account itself can be monetised. Many documented cases show that a single giveaway post on a holiday can earn promotion fees of hundreds of thousands of yuan, usually backed by professional marketing teams, far exceeding the operating costs borne by the platform. Assigning ownership of accounts to the network service provider would harm users’ interests; the account’s valuable information should be possessed, used and controlled by the user.

Operators own the intellectual property. To the operator, a social account is a collection of electronic data; the operator developed the software, operates the service and deserves recognition for that contribution. The intellectual property of the account system belongs to the operator, while the intellectual property of content created by users belongs to the users. Statutory, exclusive IP protection secures the operator’s rights, and the operator may create, modify, maintain and benefit from its product.

The operator’s profit model shows why both rights matter. Every social app’s survival depends on spreading and promotion, especially at launch, when user communication and exchange sustain the application. Users’ social relationship chains, information and traffic are the software’s greatest competitive asset, and the information stored in accounts forms the basis of the platform’s ecosystem. WeChat is a case in point: the platform attracts massive user attention, then expands into storage, payment, advertising and lifestyle services, selling part of that attention to merchants, developers and others. The value of the product is tightly bound to the number and influence of its users, and users’ social relationships build the ecosystem. Operators like Tencent have invested enormous human and financial resources and earned huge commercial returns, but users have also invested sustained intellectual and labour input that gives account information real exchange value.

Operators should therefore respect users’ right of control over their accounts, and should not use a dominant or advantageous position to strip users of ownership, nor restrict users’ rights through standard-form clauses, which would violate the principle of fairness. The law should grant and protect users’ property rights in their accounts. Platform operators owe users a duty to safeguard those rights: absent objective causes such as business closure or network failure, they should maintain normal service, and where operator conduct infringes user rights, users should enjoy the right to be informed and to claim damages.

← Back to News