Choosing evidence over shame

Legal action

That was when she began thinking about deterrence. She decided to sue.

At first, she tried to file on her own, but struggled with complexities and paperwork. She then decided to hire a lawyer, who suggested that the case would be stronger if the group sued together. Four of the six women agreed and became the plaintiffs.

The lawyer told them to collect as much evidence as possible, especially proof of cross-platform spread and impact. Xiaoting had screenshots and recordings. What she didn't have was reach. The photo had traveled into places she couldn't follow.

That's where strangers helped. After she posted about what happened, people online sent what they could find — copies, traces, proof the image had traveled.

"They told us not to give up," Xiaoting said, speaking about the netizens who came out in support of her case.

From the beginning, the defendant, identified as Luo in the judgment, refused to cooperate. The court couldn't reach him directly and had to rely on a public notice to serve him. A hearing scheduled for May was pushed to June 5, and Luo did not appear.

"If we hadn't insisted, it would have had almost no impact on him," Xiaoting said.

The case attracted media coverage and that helped to clarify that Xiaoting's claims were not fabricated.

In November 2023, Douyin finally banned the creator's account and cleared the videos. In the days before the ban, Luo had still been posting and selling products through the account.

In September 2024, the Guangzhou Internet Court issued a judgment finding that Luo had infringed the plaintiffs' portrait and reputation rights. It ordered a written apology and awarded 12,000 yuan ($1,740) in compensation.

After the ruling, Xiaoting wrote a guide and pinned it to the top of her Xiaohongshu profile, telling people what to do if a photo is stolen, sexualized and turned into a rumor; how to preserve evidence, report posts and find a lawyer.

The advice she repeats most is about shame. Don't delete the original post. Don't erase what you'll later need to prove. "The wrong isn't us," she wrote.

The case is one of many that have come to public attention in recent years, signaling that more action is needed to protect people's rights and safety in cyberspace.

One high-profile case in 2022 saw 23-year-old Zheng Linghua become the target of severe cyberbullying after posting a photo of herself with pink hair while visiting her grandfather's hospital bed to share her graduate school admission letter. Malicious rumors fabricated from the image — falsely claiming she was a "nightclub girl" involved in a relationship with an elderly man — and led to a prolonged period of online harassment that ultimately resulted in her death by suicide in early 2023.

For Xiaoting, her case was a warning about how far this kind of humiliation can go when no one pushes back. "Don't do something irreversible," she said.

What she wanted, in the end, was to make the cost visible. "You have to deter them," she said. "Doing something bad isn't solved by deleting."

The compensation still hasn't arrived, but Xiaoting doesn't linger on it. She doesn't want the lesson to collapse into discouragement. The judgment, she believes, has already changed something — turning a private contamination into a public wrong.

After the ordeal, the roommates' friendship has only gotten stronger. When the money finally comes, they plan to celebrate with a big meal. And when they can line up time off again, they'll travel together, dress up and take beautiful photos. They refuse to let the mean-spirited actions of others be the reason they stop.

"I want people to know this," Xiaoting said. "Don't think hiding behind a keyboard means you can do anything."