Kaiboluocaijing original
Author | Su Qi
Edit | Jin Xuanfan
The term "brushing data" appeared with e-commerce platforms, and now, this evil wind has blown all the way to short video and live broadcast platforms.
The 2023 CCTV 3·15 Gala will expose the shady scene behind the hot live broadcast room: a mobile phone manipulates 20,000 water troops, and the popularity, broadcast volume, likes, comments and other data in the live broadcast room are all brushed.
Usually in the live broadcast room, millions of viewers are the norm for the top streamers in the circle, and the popularity of the live broadcast room of the waist anchor is between 10,000 and 100,000. But judging from the exposure of 315, there may be some moisture in these data.
At present, advertisements and products that brush likes and reviews and brush popularity have been removed from e-commerce platforms in large quantities, but some merchants still choose to build their own websites, apps and WeChat groups to conduct transactions in private domains.
In fact, the amount of water army brushing has become "standard" in many industries, and the brand and anchor who choose the amount of brushing have a clear purpose, part of which is to induce users to follow the trend and place orders, and part of it is data fraud, in order to give an explanation to the financial owner behind it.
Gradually, the industry gradually formed a bad atmosphere of "I don't brush others", water army service providers rely on black production to make a lot of money, platforms turn a blind eye to "false prosperity" data, only users are cut leeks.
The brush volume business has formed a complete industrial chain. Some practitioners said, "If you don't brush resources, it means that you are not deep enough in the industry." The exposure of 3.15 sounded the alarm for the chaos of the water army, and next, whether the short video live broadcast industry and the game industry can further standardize the development, platform governance will be the key.
"Likes, comments, popularity, all can be swiped"
According to CCTV's 3.15 evening report, on the Internet, there are platforms to sell live broadcast room trolls, which are used to increase the popularity, number of views, likes, comments and other data in the live broadcast room, and can be self-ordered 24 hours a day. The purpose of using the water army is to make users who do not know how to be driven by the lively atmosphere under the atmosphere of the water army, impulsively follow the trend, and pay for orders.
In fact, the use of water army is already a semi-open secret in the live streaming industry, and "fake fighter" Wang Hai once proposed that many of the active fans in the live broadcast room of a big anchor are fake, in addition to the phenomenon of brushing orders.
It's just that with the strengthening of supervision, the whereabouts of these trolls are becoming more and more secretive.
Open pineapple finance on Taobao, Xianyu, QQ search for keywords such as "Douyin, Kuaishou live broadcast praise / popular", found that there are no particularly obvious advertisements, with "live viewing" and other obscure keyword search, you can also search out related product links, most merchants indicate that they provide live broadcast data optimization and other services, have more than ten years of experience and can provide invoices.
But these links do not have a product detail introduction page, only marked the price, when opening pineapple finance asked "is there a specific quotation in the live broadcast room", the customer service replied that "because it is more sensitive now, trouble contact customer service V to communicate, it is appropriate to pay here".
Xu Yang, a merchant who has live streaming business on Taobao and Douyin, told Open Pineapple Finance that most businesses that provide water army services have switched to private domain operations, and some will develop their own websites and apps, and set up external blocking functions, which require registration to place orders independently.
Now the trolls on the market offer are much the same. In the 3.15 party, a staff member introduced, "100 people live broadcast popularity 100 people online for 1 hour online 49 yuan, likes 100,0018 yuan, 30 comments 59 yuan". Xu Yang said that with the increasing number of people entering, the price has come down, and the price of the previous live broadcast list of 100 popular (real people) can reach about 220 yuan, and non-real people can be about 80 yuan.
In addition to manipulating the popularity, likes and comments in the live broadcast room, the likes and comments of short videos, as well as the number of collections and views, can be swiped, and the price ranges from a few yuan to several hundred yuan.
In the latest Douyin price list sent by Xuyang, the price per 1,000 high-quality real fans is 239.4 yuan, the price per 50 real people likes is 2.74 yuan, the price of 20 high-quality real people reviews is 17.1 yuan, the number of views of 1000 videos is 0.27 yuan, the number of 100 works forwarded is 10.45 yuan, and the 20 video collections are 4.69 yuan, the number can be stacked infinitely, and the higher the price of the goods, the faster the arrival speed is generally the faster.
In February this year, a service provider advertised in a WeChat group
The demand for water armies in many industries is increasing, and in the order groups of multiple online water armies, there is a massive demand for water armies every day, and even some more bizarre needs have emerged, such as providing water armies for some game platforms, increasing game popularity, and attracting more players to spend money to recharge. In the 3.15 party, it was exposed that games such as Candy Fruit Alliance, Babe fishing, playing chessboard, and fighting landlords all purchased water army services. There are even people who hire online trolls to go to competitors' live broadcast rooms and automatically complain or even smear.
"Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, where there is data, there are water armies, and a lot of data you see can be brushed." Xu Yang said.
In fact, Kuaishou and Douyin each have official traffic promotion tools, namely Fan Tiao and DOU+, respectively, and streamers and MCN organizations can promote live broadcast rooms and improve relevant data after payment. Compared to the large number of online trolls on the market, the price is higher.
Live streaming platform officials usually do not authorize third-party companies to brush orders, and have formulated relevant rules to severely crack down on the brushing behavior of trolls. However, some insiders believe that the online trolls have objectively promoted the "prosperity" of live broadcast platform data, and the platform's attitude will be more ambiguous for a certain period of time.
Li Sheng, chief lawyer of Beijing Zhipu Law Firm, told Open Pineapple Finance that the inducement methods of online trolls, such as brushing quantitative control reviews, illegal promotion, fabricating and displaying false information, etc., violate the Consumer Rights Protection Law, conceal the true situation of products or services, and infringe on consumers' rights to compare, identify and select. If there is a paid screen speculation to deliberately create online hot spots, which constitutes improper public opinion, fraud, etc., it will violate the "Public Security Administration Punishment Law" at best, and violate the criminal law at worst, suspected of the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble, fraud, etc.
The interest chain behind the trolls: group control software, buying and selling ID cards, and recruiting agents
So, how do these companies manipulate large numbers of "human" botnets?
According to the exposure of CCTV's 3.15 party, some live broadcast companies will control a large number of trolls through group control systems. According to the staff, the so-called group control system is to use a computer to control a hundred mobile phones at the same time, pretending to be a hundred real users as a water army.
"10 computers are 1,000, 100 computers are 10,000 trolls, and many live broadcast companies will use such a group control system." Some big anchors can spend hundreds of millions of yuan to make a computer room, and the computer room is very large. Manager Lin, a seller of group control software, said.
Operation site of group control system
The cloud control system launched by Jiaxing Yuhe Culture Media Co., Ltd. is simpler and more rude to operate, and a mobile phone can control 200 to 20,000 mobile phones at the same time as a water army. In order to make the water army look more like real users, when entering the live broadcast room, Yuhe's cloud control system can also set the batch, entry time and different speech content in advance.
After having the equipment, to enter the live broadcast room and game APP, the water army first needs to register as a user of these platforms, thousands of water army accounts, how to register successfully?
Manager Zhou of Jiaxing Yuhe Culture Media Co., Ltd. mentioned that his company uses an IoT card, which can be used to register an account on the short video platform. According to Baidu Encyclopedia, the IoT card is a card provided by operators for IoT service enterprises for the networking of smart terminal devices, which is only sold in bulk for enterprise users, and is widely used in shared bicycles, mobile payment, vending machines and other fields, not for individual users. The particularity of "no real-name authentication" makes IoT cards a new tool for online fraud.
Manager Zhou of Yarun Jin Network Technology Co., Ltd. mentioned that the company imports a large number of resident ID card information into the database through the cloud control system, and the system will automatically enter the name and ID number before entering the game, and the ID number is obtained through gray channels.
With a batch of registered accounts, coupled with convenient operations, the water army industry has become more unscrupulous. In order to better control the profit cost, the brushing company will also buy the second-hand inventory machine as a brushing tool at a very low price.
Cao Wei, a senior partner at ZhongYin (Nanjing) Law Firm in Beijing, said buying and selling ID cards and related personal information was illegal. The Criminal Law stipulates that whoever sells or provides citizens' personal information to others in violation of relevant state regulations and the circumstances are serious shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention, and shall be fined concurrently or alone; If the circumstances are particularly serious, they shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than seven years, and shall also be fined. Where relevant state provisions are violated by selling or providing to others citizens' personal information obtained in the course of performing duties or providing services, a heavier punishment is to be given in accordance with the provisions of the preceding paragraph.
Li Sheng added that the crime of buying and selling resident identity documents is a joint crime, that is, the law punishes not only the seller but also the buyer, so this crime applies to both buyers and sellers. The buyer's purchase of identity documents is also an act of illegally obtaining citizens' personal information, so it is also suspected of infringing on citizens' personal information.
In addition to directly selling water army services for profit, "recruiting agents" is also one of the profit means of these institutions, that is, the development of downstream agent salesmen.
According to Open Pineapple Finance, you only need to pay an entry fee to become an agent salesman, and you can earn about 10%-15% commission per order. Moreover, the agent salesman can set his own price, and after paying the commission, the rest of the difference belongs to him, and he can also continue to pull the salesman, so as to achieve more benefits.
Who is fueling the trolls?
Why is the Internet platform data fraud repeatedly banned, and the water army ecology "endless"?
In recent years, the online trolls industry has become larger and larger, which is related to the barbaric growth of the live streaming e-commerce industry.
Tianyan inspection data shows that there are currently more than 5,500 live streaming e-commerce related enterprises in the mainland. Among the enterprises engaged in live streaming e-commerce-related businesses, 0.85% of the relevant enterprises have experienced legal proceedings, 5.90% of the relevant enterprises have had abnormal operations, and 0.34% of the relevant enterprises have experienced administrative penalties.
Secondly, data fraud is in demand in the field of live streaming e-commerce. Mai Zi, a person in the live streaming e-commerce industry, concluded that for bloggers, the amount of brushing can allow them to get a higher market premium, and beautiful data can satisfy the brand side. For the media, good data can give a good account to the brand. For platforms, the false boom in platform traffic can help them obtain higher financing in the investment market.
Mercenary trolls cost money, and there is no end to such vicious competition. "In fact, brands now spend money to buy face. From the perspective of cost saving, I think most people are reluctant to brush, if everyone does not brush, in fact, they can focus more on building brands. Maizi said.
He further pointed out that the degree of brushing of anchors who signed MCN will be more serious, on the one hand, because they are highly commercialized and have more strict requirements for profitability. On the other hand, commercialization itself is a consumption of fans, and to make up for this gradual decline in trust, it is still necessary to rely on high-investment marketing and brush volume to bring beautiful data.
Xu Yang said that now the amount of brushing is inevitable is caused by the overall chaos of the industry, other MCN institutions and anchors brush you do not brush, the data gap will be very large, in addition, some brands have higher expectations for the effect of communication and delivery, or the contract between buyers and sellers requires a higher goal, in order to complete the goal, some anchors and agents have chosen to cheat.
Cao Wei pointed out that the reason why online trolls are repeatedly banned is that, objectively speaking, trolls have a certain degree of concealment, and the core reason is that relevant entities can make profits, and the benefits are disproportionate to the risks, that is, the possibility of being discovered or the strength of punishment is disproportionate to the profit. In addition, some platforms lack a sense of responsibility, fail to fulfill the necessary audit, supervision and prevention obligations, and even some platforms knowingly and condone false trolls in order to pursue profits.
It can be seen that in the face of interests, businesses and live broadcast platforms that purchase water army services have encouraged the online water army to some extent.
"Who is the profiteer, who is fueling the online troll, bad merchants, lack of self-discipline platforms should reflect on themselves." Li Sheng pointed out sharply.
"The world's bitter water army has been around for a long time!" Data fraud and false propaganda are regarded as the two major cancers in the live broadcast industry and even the entire marketing industry, and should be eradicated.
A number of industry insiders pointed out that in fact, if the platform wants to really block the brushing behavior, it is not technically difficult, but behind it is a strong industrial chain, and the platform itself is the beneficiary, including advertisers and agencies, are all "grasshoppers on a rope".
Profit-driven, interest-tempting, the chaos of the water army exposed at the 3.15 evening party is frozen for three feet. Li Sheng suggested that the industry needs self-discipline, and the establishment of an effective regulatory mechanism, and the courage of strong men to break their wrists in order to usher in the long-term healthy development of the industry. It is hoped that through this exposure, consumers will become more rational, businesses and platforms will become more self-disciplined, and regulators will gradually strengthen legislation and law enforcement.
*The title image is from Visual China. At the request of the interviewee, Xuyang and Maizi are pseudonyms in the text.
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